Europe’s wildlife and natural resources
have been benefitting from LIFE support for 20 years. It was back in 1992
when the EU’s financial instrument for
the environment first opened its doors
to help provide co-finance for projects
involved in implementing European
environmental policy. Much of this
initial work concentrated on launching
actions through the then 12 Member
States to establish an embryonic Natura 2000 network. Since then, LIFE’s
mandate has grown and flourished. It
has strengthened its focus on nature
conservation and expanded its reach
to a wide range of environmental protection and information dissemination
services. Today, LIFE is operating in
all 27 Member States, where it continues to build on its
impressive portfolio of results in tackling key challenges
such as biodiversity decline, habitat loss, resource efficiency and climate action, among other important intervention areas.
Central to LIFE’s success has been the role of people.
Therefore what better way to mark the 20th anniversary
of the programme than to focus on the people who have
helped LIFE to get things done? These include the coordinators and team members from the more than 3 500
projects over the last two decades who have invested

To hear these individuals, communities and businesses in their own
words is to understand directly the
value, impact and inspiration of LIFE:
its value as a source of support for
established conservation organisations and programmes; its impact
on people who took a new interest
in nature and the environment as a
result of their interaction with the
programme; and its inspiration for
countless green business initiatives.

their time and energy converting LIFE funds into practical, tangible, on-the-ground benefits for Europe’s environment. They also include the politicians from local,
regional, national and European levels who have persistently backed and promoted LIFE’s case throughout the
years. Equally important are all the tens of thousands of
individuals from the local communities and businesses
who have participated in LIFE projects and contributed
to their accomplishments. Not forgetting of course the
dedicated personnel from countless governing bodies around Europe who have administered and steered
LIFE’s outputs so effectively since 1992.

We’ll hear the voices of people from
all over the EU - and indeed from
neighbouring countries - whose experiences reflect the LIFE programme’s
broad perspective on the relevance
of holistic support for Europe’s environment as a whole.
We hope you will find this publication both enlightening and inspirational. The stories it contains demonstrate LIFE’s considerable scope for connecting with
a wide cross-section of different peoples’ environmental convictions. They also underscore the passion and commitment that exists for sustaining our
environmental inheritance. Together, they show that
LIFE remains in good stead to continue its productive
and popular support for Europe’s environment into the
next 20 years.

FOREWORD

Celebrating 20 years
of LIFE’s people

CONTENTS

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4 Behind the scenes

Lifting the lid on the LIFE
programme.................................................... 5
The founding father................................... 5
The namer...................................................... 6
The legislator .............................................. 7
The leader...................................................... 7
The energiser ............................................10
The good neighbour.................................11
The “LIFEer”.................................................12
The helper.....................................................13
The monitoring team coordinator.....14
The monitor.................................................14
The communicator....................................15

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16 MEET THE COMMUNITIES

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LIFE and the regional
record-breaker...........................................17
A city-wide environment
of innovation...............................................18
Building a partnership
for better city living.................................20
LIFE the ‘trigger’ for two decades
of restoration..............................................22
LIFE’s help for the forests of
the Holy Community of
Mount Athos................................................24
Positive partnership memories
from a neighbouring state....................26
Combatting marine
pollution in the Med.................................28
Building river restoration
communities through LIFE....................30
Waiting for the flood................................32
Biomass boilers improve
village life in Slovakia.............................33
Helping agriculture to innovate..........34

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36 MEET THE CITIZENS

LIFE involves residents
in initiatives to meet
Kyoto obligations......................................37
Snakes Alive!...............................................38
Art for LIFE’s sake....................................40
A special week for waste
reduction.......................................................42
A Finnish household embraces
LIFE waste prevention ...........................44
Turning rivers into a classroom..........45
Children’s friend Boo...............................47
LIFE builds relationships
to tackle heath fires................................49
LIFE lays a foundation
for renewable building............................52

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56 MEET THE GUARDIANS

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A passion for conservation
with ponies...................................................57
Fostering a fondness for nature........59
View from a Swedish plateau.............62
Crofting is a LIFE choice.........................63
LIFE’s graziers
of the Hungarian grasslands...............66
Living with the wolf at the door........69
Turning the tide on sea
turtle conservation in Sardinia...........71
Helping a Rhine fisherman
achieve a lifelong dream.......................74
Solving a biogas problem......................76
Pig farming cleans up its act...............77
Linking LIFE to the farm
on Anglesey and Lleyn............................79

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80 MEET THE BUSINESSES

Building the BASTA...................................81
Cooling off the greenhouse gases.....82
Distributing healthy food
without causing harm.............................84
A breakthrough ‘biotyre’........................87
Research and reuse of winery
‘wastes’ continues to grow...................88
The brewer: A toast
to nature conservation...........................90
LIFE marks ‘turning point’
for rural tourism in Latvia....................92
Restoring national pride
in North Karelia.........................................94
Camping: “It’s a way of life!”...............95
LIFE 20 years competition....................97

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Behind the scenes
From its conception over 20 years ago, through its development during
successive programming periods, many aspects of the LIFE programme
have remained somewhat invisible to the wider public. In this section
of the brochure we shine the spotlight on some of these â&#x20AC;&#x153;behind the
scenesâ&#x20AC;? activities and on some of the people and organisations that
have helped to make LIFE the programme it is today.

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Lifting the lid
on the LIFE programme
The founding father
Often credited with being the father of LIFE, retired Member of the European Parliament (MEP),
Hemmo Muntingh, still has a strong attachment to
the programme he helped to establish more than
20 years ago.
From the modest €70 million programme that was established in 1992, the LIFE programme, with a current
budget of over €2 billion, is now firmly established as
the EU’s main financial instrument for the environment.
However, for Hemmo Muntingh this outcome was not always certain.
The story of LIFE began in 1989, when Mr Muntingh was
seeking to hold his seat in the European Parliament (EP),
having first been elected in 1979. During the election
campaign, his party, the Dutch Labour Party (Partij van
de Arbeid, PvdA) proposed the idea of a European Environment Fund. ”In fact, this was already party policy and
I asked for it to be included in the election programme,”
he recalls.
Once re-elected, Mr Muntingh set about making good
on his election promise, and when the opportunity arose
during the Parliament’s budget procedure in 1989, he

included an amendment proposing a budget line for an
Environment Fund. “As a goal, I mentioned an amount
that would be equivalent to 1% of the total EU budget in
1995. The European Parliament accepted the proposal,
but in the joint decision of the European Council and the
European Commission the budget contained only a PM1,
without an amount.”
Not perturbed, Mr Muntingh redoubled his efforts during
the budget procedure of 1990. “I tried it again the following year, this time via the Parliament’s environment
committee, and an amount of ECU 31 million was introduced to the budget. The EP’s budget committee accepted this amendment of the environment committee
and also declared it a priority of the EP. There was even a
further amendment in the budget committee to raise the
amount from ECU 31 million to ECU 81 million.”
The EP, in its first reading of the budget, accepted this
proposal but once again it ran aground in the Council,
where for a second time, the budget amount was replaced
with a PM. “Of course, the EP reintroduced the ECU 81
million in the second reading but during the very difficult
1. P.M or Pro Memory, a procedure used to inscribe a budget line without specifying an amount.

negotiations that followed it had to be withdrawn. However, a budget amount of ECU 31 million, the amount I
had originally proposed, was eventually accepted. It was

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not as much as the EP wanted but it was an important
step forward - ‘reculer pour mieux sauter’ as they say!”
During its passage though the institutions, the Environmental Fund acquired the name by which it eventually
came to be known: LIFE. “As far as I remember, the name,
l’Instrument financier pour l´environnement (LIFE), was

The namer
Alain Lamassoure, the French MEP who played
a large role in establishing the LIFE programme,
says that he got the idea for its name after dinner one night in his hotel room in the Métropole,
Brussels. LIFE is in fact an acronym: L’Instrument
Financier pour l’Environnement (“financial instrument for the environment”).
Alain Lamassoure
Mr Lamassoure’s original idea was to create an
extra Structural Fund. “There were already three Structural Funds: regional,
social and rural development. It was a period when environmental concerns
started to appear in most Member States, and my original idea was to
complement the three Structural Funds with one dedicated to protecting the
environment,” he says.
While a programme with financial means was agreed, it did not go so far as
a Structural Fund. Mr Lamassoure regrets that the amount of funds available was not higher, but he says that “it has been very helpful in many
countries, particularly on biodiversity and now new renewable energies.
Hopefully, it will be beefed up in the next general framework.”
“It’s become a very important programme in the EU… It’s my child, but it’s
grown up. I’m proud of it… but I trust those in charge in the Commission and
the Parliament to reorient it whenever necessary and point it in the right
direction,” he says.

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invented by the rapporteur of the
EP’s budget committee, Mr Alain
Lamasourre.” (See box: The namer)
The story did not end there, however,
and it soon emerged that the Commission and the EP had very different ideas
about how the new programme should be
operationalised. “The controversy became so
hot that the EP resorted to an unusual method to
safeguard its position: it blocked the creation of any new
posts in the Commission until such time as it came up
with an acceptable proposal for LIFE. The Commission
responded by drawing up a new Regulation for LIFE. I
saw the first concept and
it seemed okay, and because I was the rapporteur for the environment
committee in the EP I had
the possibility to steer the
final concept in the right
direction.

“

“I am retired now and I have to content
myself with the beautiful nature in my garden here in
Friesland. But I still follow LIFE from a distance and I am
pleased to see the very good work it has been doing for
nature conservation. I can
only hope that this continues in the future. In the
coming years I think the
environment and nature
in the newer EU Member
States will come under
intense pressure arising
from the implementation
of the EU’s agriculture and regional policies. I hope that
LIFE can help to offset this and demonstrate how we can
do things differently in future, and avoid the mistakes of
the past.”

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I am very proud of LIFE and the
contribution it makes, especially
to nature conservation, which has
always been my passion in life

“I could tell you a lot more about this. In fact, I already
introduced the concept of an Environment Fund in the
EP in 1979 and 1980. But it was not accepted. So, for
over 10 years I had to fight all the way. But it was worth
it. The environment and nature conservation has been
my life’s work. Even before I became an MEP I was the
Director of the Dutch Society for the Preservation of the
Wadden Sea (Waddenvereniging). All my life, even as a
young boy, I have always been happiest when I am close
to nature; bird watching or trying to get a glimpse of
some special plant or animal.

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The legislator

The leader

The results and findings of LIFE projects have
strong implications for policymakers and over the
past 20 years have impacted on legislation on a
wide range of issues. In one area, in particular,
LIFE projects were a very useful instrument for
shaping policy: the management of coastal zones.
Anne Burril, Deputy Head of Unit, DG ENV, worked
on the drafting of the recommendation on Integrated Coastal Zone Management.

The LIFE programme has seen many changes and
developments in its 20-year history, but for most
of this time there has been at least one constant
– Angelo Salsi, the current head of the LIFE Nature
Unit.

Europe’s coasts required a joined-up approach to management, but the EU recognised that it was “a very complex
area”, says Anne Burrill. ”We didn’t think that it was a very
good idea for us to sit in our office and try to make up a
solution, so we decided that the best thing to do was to
actually have some private projects, some experience that
we could draw on.”
LIFE was the main instrument for financing this demonstration process, accounting for around two-thirds of the
projects (some 20 projects were launched in 1995). Other
projects were financed under the INTERREG programme.
“These were private projects that we were doing to test out
different approaches to integrated coastal management to
see what works well and what doesn’t,” she says.
A team of consultants also worked on the initiative. “They
were looking at the particular aspects of the pilot projects.
For instance, there was this one fellow who was looking
at legal aspects of the different projects. Another one
was looking at public participation aspects. There were
six themes in total,” says Ms Burrill. This process led to
the publication of a summary of the main finding of the
projects, followed by a public consultation on the future of
coastal management. A recommendation was preferred to

Anne Burril
a directive, and on 30 May 2002, a European Parliament
and Council Recommendation concerning the implementation of Integrated Coastal Zone Management in Europe
was adopted.
Ms Burrill says that one of the chief advantages of LIFE is
its geographical reach. “Our projects were spread across
EU countries. LIFE was the only vehicle that had in-depth
and relatively long-term input from sample sites across
the whole EU.”
The Deputy Head of Unit explains that she “managed the
policy up to [the point] where the recommendation was
being adopted and have somewhat followed it since then.
Because of the sensitivity of some of the issues, particularly the relationship to land use planning, it was decided
that the best approach was to allow quite a lot of flexibility
and to use a recommendation. We saw in the pilot projects
quite a considerable range of approaches in different countries. So the recommendation that came out was a series
of principles that we had derived from the pilot projects. It
mandates the Member States to set national policies on
integrated coastal management and it sets out the kind of
things should be covered in these policies.”
According to Ms Burrill, the Barcelona Convention on coastal management, which established a protocol for Mediterranean countries, was “very much inspired by the EU recommendation”.

A native of Bolzano, in the north of Italy, Mr Salsi joined
the European Commission in 1994, having previously
worked as an agro-meteorologist for the regional government of Emilia-Romagna. Since then, his career path
has been closely aligned to development of the LIFE programme, having moved from being a LIFE Desk Officer to
Deputy Head of the LIFE
Unit, to his current position as Head of the LIFE
Nature Unit.

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The concerns that led to
the creation of LIFE are still there

“I feel very honoured to be part of this experiment, and
this community of people. From those who manage the
programme to the beneficiaries and the Member States,
there is a great sense of pride in what we are trying to
achieve, and for me, LIFE’s best days are still to come.”

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From its conception in the early 90s, Mr Salsi believes
that LIFE is now reaching a stage of maturity as a programme, having won the appreciation and confidence of
beneficiaries and those outside the programme.
“The concerns that led to the creation of LIFE are still
there, they have not gone away, and I fear that the environment will continue to need public investment for
many years to come. Twenty years have gone by but
this has not made this instrument any less relevant. If
you think of it in human terms, I would say we are at
the end of our teens and we are now becoming an adult

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to suggest that the project methodology was integrated into the RDP.

Making it work
With responsibility for one of the three main components of the LIFE programme, Mr Salsi will have a key
role to play in realising these future ambitions.
“My job is to make sure the machine works, not just in
absolute terms but also in terms of the time and resource
constraints we have to work with. But as well as ensuring that the administrative machinery works, I also have
a programme that is not just about administration but
about improving our environment. You have to make sure
there is a balance between the two elements and that the
means don’t prevail over the scope – this is my big task.”

The moment people start to
perceive land and nature as a part
of our shared heritage, just like
historical sites or precious art
collections, it will be become a
major unifying force that will go
well beyond what we imagine

Since becoming head of
the LIFE Nature and Biodiversity Unit in 2009, Mr
Salsi has worked hard at
achieving this balance
and at ensuring better integration between the financial instrument and the policy.

“When I first joined the Commission, the same Unit
that was responsible for nature policy was also responsible for the nature component of LIFE; they
were two sides of the same coin. At the time I was
the Desk Officer responsible for the implementation
of EU nature policy (Birds and Habitats Directives) in
Italy and Romania, but I was also responsible for LIFE
Nature projects in these countries. I remember on
one occasion I was reviewing the Rural Development
Programme (RDP) for an Italian region and I noticed
there was a specific measure to target a certain type
of forest habitat, but I also knew that an Italian LIFE
project had done some work in this area so I was able

“

who knows its abilities and potential and is looking to the
future with even bigger ambitions than before. This is
reflected in the Commission’s proposal for the new LIFE
Regulation for 2014-2020, which is more innovative and
ambitious, while also preserving the key elements that
have made LIFE a success.”

“

“Since 2000, the policy units and the LIFE programme
have been managed separately and this has made integration more difficult. So the day after I was appointed
Head of Unit, the first thing I did was to set up a strategy to improve the bridge
between these units, and this
has already started to pay
dividends. In the last couple of
years we have been involved
in 10-15 court cases relating
to the protection of a bird or
site, for example. The policy
units would instigate these
cases but we would support
them by providing information
or data gained from projects
on the ground.
“In fact, just yesterday I received an e-mail from a colleague who identified a potential problem in relation to
certain species in France, linked to the building of roads.
This information comes directly from a LIFE project and
could result in action being taken by our policy units.”
Integration also has an important strategic function
and Mr Salsi is particularly proud of the role LIFE has
played in the development of the Natura 2000 network, which he considers to one of the programme’s
most important contributions over the last 20 years.
“In the 1990s we wanted LIFE to support the drawing
up of inventories of potential Natura 2000 sites. Six or

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seven countries did it and it was a major step forward,
really, a huge one. You have to think that counties like
Spain and Italy prepared all their inventories, which
later led to the designation of Natura 2000 sites,
through LIFE projects.
“Once the sites were designated, the next issue to
address was management. So we said to the Member States, ‘use LIFE money to develop a system
for preparing and adopting management plans’. In
France, there was a major project that led to what is
called the ‘document d’objectifs’, which now provides
a template for site management planning. Italy did
the same thing and other countries also followed suit.
Thousands of management plans have since been developed through LIFE projects.”
More recently, LIFE has also made an important contribution to the development the Natura 2000 network
of marine sites. “LIFE Nature has been a very efficient
tool in developing techniques and indicators to identify and survey areas that could be designated. This
marine network of sites now covers several hundred
thousand square kilometres and a lot of this is due to
LIFE projects.”

Future priorities
Looking to the future, Mr Salsi believes that integration and Natura 2000 will remain key priorities for the
LIFE Nature and Biodiversity component. “An important feature of the new Regulation is the invention
of what we call ‘integrated projects’. From a nature
perspective, these projects are there to further support the management of Natura 2000.

“Natura 2000 won’t solve all our problems, but it is so
huge and such an enormous challenge that it wouldn’t
make sense to start diluting our efforts now, especially when we are so close to realising this incredible achievement. You have to remember, we’re talking
here about 18% of the EU territory, and I wouldn’t be
surprised if we double this in the coming years. If we
even make sure that half or two-thirds of this is
reasonably well implemented it will make a major
change in the way we perceive nature and the
environment.
“The moment people start to perceive land and
nature as a part of our shared heritage, just
like historical sites or precious art collections,
it will be become a major unifying force that
will go well beyond what we imagine. Unfortunately, we have been brought up to believe that
a large chunk of our happiness comes from our
material happiness, but studies show that this is
absolutely not true. Happiness can also be found
in seeing a beautiful landscape or sitting on a
nice beach.
“We have to change perceptions and I believe LIFE projects are playing a part in this and will play an even
more important part in the future. Since 1992, LIFE
Nature has been financing more or less the
same kind of activity, year after year, project
after project. If you want to build a house and
you don’t have the money to buy all the bricks on day
one, you buy a brick every other week and after many
years of buying bricks you eventually have a house. At
this stage, we have built a pretty solid foundation. In
another 20 years I hope we will have a house.”

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The energiser
After 10 years in the LIFE unit doing “a bit of everything”, Anne Louise Friedrichsen has lost none
of her passion for seeing first-hand the impact of
LIFE projects. “When you go on visits, it really becomes concrete what they’re doing. You come back
full of energy and you can see the point,” she says.

Anne Louise Friedrichsen

Though her current role in the LIFE Environment and Ecoinnovation Unit as Deputy Head of Unit has limited her
opportunities for on-site visits, it was this contact with
people on the ground that attracted her to join the team.
Educated as a political scientist, Anne Louise began
working for the Commission in 1995, first for DG Education and Culture. Since 2001 she has been a Desk Officer
for Denmark and Sweden, both for environment and nature projects, and has been involved in the organisation
of a special conference on water and the ex-post evaluation of 10 years of the LIFE programme. She also helped
set up the rules for the LIFE+ financing period.
The “pioneer spirit” encouraged by the programme is
especially attractive to Anne Louise. “You have people
that are launching things; that are difficult. None of these
projects are mainstream. They are opposing the ordinary
way of doing things; saying this could be done better.”

“

“

Visiting the projects has enabled her to get to know her
native Denmark better than she would otherwise have
done, she says. “I’ve had
wonderful guided tours in
forests, where people tell
you all the names of the
trees. I thought I knew about
these things, but it’s great to
go there with a biologist.”

None of these projects are mainstream. They are opposing the
ordinary way of doing things; saying
this could be done better

Working on environmental issues, however, is
a mixed blessing. As
well as the ‘heaven’ of
a beautiful nature trail,
there’s the ‘hell’ of “sewage systems and the guts
of society” – but Anne Louise says that she is just as
interested in projects that attempt to deal with waste and introduce cleaner industrial processes
as she is with nature conservation.
“Once you go to a waste treatment area and you see
what they’re doing there, it makes you a little bit more
conscious about what you do when you go home,” she
says. Even though she admits that it is difficult to always
be aware of environmental issues on a personal level,
she points to the wide range of good LIFE projects that
are raising the awareness of ordinary EU citizens. “What
I am aiming for this year is for people to really start
changing ways of acting, but it will take a lot of effort.
The LIFE programme has very good information projects,
for example, the European Week for Waste Reduction
(see pp 42-43), which focus on raising awareness and
changing people’s behaviour.”

Shaping legislation
Sometimes it is necessary to enforce such changes
in behaviour, “Laws help introduce environmentally
friendly practices, and that’s where the projects come
in: sometimes you can’t make a law unless you know
that it’s technically possible to do a thing,” she says.

LIFE projects demonstrate the feasibility of introducing
new practices and
thus can help usher
in new legislation
where needed. Anne
Louise gives the example of a small detector
that determines whether
a particular rig at sea is leaking oil into the environment. She
says that oil companies would have
been reluctant to fix such a detector to their
equipment if there wasn’t first a legal requirement and
that this requirement would not have come about unless there was the research to show its value.
The LIFE programme employs a bottom-up approach.
“Sometimes projects prove that the technology works
and sometimes [they prove] it fails. It may still have
been a good project; they tried but it’s just not feasible
or it costs too much.”
Policymakers, however, like to steer research, Anne
Louise says. “For example, they say, ‘I want to make
seas cleaner and therefore I want projects on this’, but
that doesn’t mean that the programme can deliver this
– and if you try to steer too much then you won’t get
the other bubbles that come up.
“With the bottom-up approach, once in a while you
will get these nice links between what happened on
the ground and then what became law, but it is not
systematic.”

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The good neighbour
Nevertheless, the new LIFE programme proposal attempts to strengthen the link between policy and innovation. According to Anne Louise, “it has a part that
is more top down, where a policymaker has said that
what we would really like to see is this, and therefore hopefully they will get more proposals on that
subject.”
Moreover, the new proposal introduces the idea of integrated projects. “The LIFE programme is very small:
if you really want to fund the environment it’s via
the structural funds. The idea is that these integrated
projects will serve as a catalyst for focusing structural funds onto the environment – it’s theoretically
possible but it’s not being done. The LIFE programme
can inspire these funds to do more for the environment,” she says.

Future hopes
Reflecting on the 20th anniversary of the LIFE programme, Anne Louise believes that there is still very
much a need for good projects. “It’s a good mechanism
to fund innovative ideas. Some of them will then lead to
big changes.
“I believe in the local idea: you focus on where people are.
Most people are happy to preserve a green area close
to them and to be informed about why it is valuable. “I
hope that these little lights that we light will not be the
only things that are left. We really need environmental
considerations to be systematically integrated into areas
such as agriculture, energy, transport and so forth. And
there is a need for a programme like LIFE because it has
this inspirational effect.”

LIFE TCY was set up in 1992 “to develop awareness and capacities in the countries bordering the
Mediterranean and the Baltic seas”, says Alban de
Villepin, who was Desk Officer for the TCY strand.
LIFE TCY was a recognition that “environmental
problems don’t stop at the border: if you have
countries polluting these seas, then it will have an
impact on neighbouring countries.”
Alban believes that the strand was successful in raising
awareness on environmental issues in Third Countries.
“LIFE TCY was a way to invite our neighbours to consider
more highly the environment and help them to develop
some local and national capacities in order for them to
handle better the environmental issues connected to
their own development,” he says.
“Thanks to this strand, there was a possibility to exchange experience and transfer of know-how from European partners to local beneficiaries and actors in the
Third Country.”

According to Alban, some examples of good projects include: the improvement of wastewater treatment at tanneries in Tunisia; the preservation and increase of knowledge of the ecosystem of the Sava river basin (Croatia/
Slovenia); and the building of Turkey’s capacity to deal
with climate change.
The LIFE+ financing period, however, restricted the possibility to develop LIFE TCY and the strand was discontinued in 2006. Moreover, “there was a willingness to
integrate more deeply environmental activities into EU
external relations policies and programmes,” he says.
Alban continues to monitor the ongoing projects, which
are now all nearing completion, as well as monitoring
LIFE Environment projects in Italy, Portugal and Romania. He is also the communication officer for the LIFE
Environment and Eco-innovation unit. “LIFE is a learning
experience,” he says. “The possibility to visit a project and
have direct contact with a beneficiary, so to better understand their hopes and obstacles, is always rewarding.”

Alban de Villepin

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The “LIFEer”
Frank Vassen

Few people hold the distinction of having been a LIFE
project manager, a LIFE monitor and a Desk Officer
within the LIFE Unit at the European Commission.
Frank Vassen is one of this rare breed, which gives
him a unique insight to the programme and to the
relationships between the different stakeholders.

Frank’s studies then brought him to Namur, where he read
zoology, specialising in freshwater ecology. “I did a PhD on
salmon and trout, studying their behaviour and ecology. I
even built an artificial stream in the basement of the university. It was great fun and I have very fond memories of
this time.”

Born and reared in a village in the eastern, Germanspeaking, part of Belgium, Frank’s love of nature and the
environment was established at an early age. At just 12
years old, he joined a local bird watching club, which consolidated this interest and also paved the way for an early
introduction to nature conservation.

Then, in 1995, as he came to the end of his studies, Frank
got his first “real LIFE” experience, when he secured a job
as the manager of a LIFE project on the conservation of
the corncrake in Belgium. “At the time we thought there
was a corncrake population in Belgium, but we discovered
during the project that it was only singing males, with very
little reproduction. But it took quite an effort to reach this
conclusion. We carried out the monitoring at night, so for
three years, during May and June, I could be seen driving
through the countryside in the middle of the night, listening
for singing birds. In the right conditions you could hear the
singing more than a kilometre away, but the funny thing
is, I never actually saw a corncrake, and I still haven’t! Fortunately though, the restoration work we undertook was
more beneficial for many other species.”

“I became fascinated with birds. I was lucky because there
were some people in the club that were really committed
and were very good mentors. Some of the members also
formed a conservation group, which I became involved in.
This was the late 80s and at the time we succeeded in getting funding from a predecessor of the LIFE programme
for a project to restore the habitat of the black stork. The
money was used to buy land, which we then restored,
working mostly at weekends as we were all volunteers.
“This land is now the core of a whole network of nature
reserves. It was basically the start of a new dynamic that
later developed through other funds and approaches. From
just a handful of people, this group has now grown to over
700 members and manages about 450 ha.”

Frank’s next “LIFE change” came in 1999, when he was
offered a position with Ecosystems Ltd, the company then
contracted by the Commission to carry out the monitoring
of LIFE projects. “I was mainly responsible for monitoring
projects in Austria and Germany. In Austria, it was mostly

river restoration and management, with some really big
projects on the Danube and its tributaries. I travelled a lot
during this time, to Austria and Germany, but also to visit
projects in many other countries.”
“What really struck me about this experience was that
despite the marked differences between the areas and
landscapes I visited, the challenges were often very similar. They were mainly linked to changes in agriculture and
forestry, either intensification or land abandonment. It was
an interesting time. I met a lot of LIFE beneficiaries, very
interesting people, and very committed.”
Before long, however, Frank’s LIFE adventure was to take
another twist, when in 2003 he received a phone call from
Angelo Salsi, inviting him to join the LIFE Unit at the European Commission. “At the time the Unit was looking for a
German, French and English speaker so I fitted the bill perfectly. In fact, my language skills were also one of the main
reasons I was offered the job as a LIFE monitor.”
Within the LIFE Unit, Frank spent a short period working on
the Environment component, before eventually joining the
LIFE Nature team in 2004. “I was the Desk Officer for Romania and Germany, and also the Coordinator for the project
selection process. As a Desk Officer, my job was basically to
decide if a project should be paid or not. This decision was
based mainly on information provided by the projects and
the monitors, but I also had to apply common sense. One
situation is never the same as another.” “My background
as a beneficiary and monitor was certainly a help and it
allowed for a kind of mutual trust to develop. It is true
that most beneficiaries think the Commission is extremely
bureaucratic and that many rules don’t make sense, but I
always made it a personal challenge to be able to justify

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The helper
each rule. I felt this was important and I think most people
understood the reasons when they were explained.”
Frank says he feels privileged to have worked on three
different aspects of the LIFE programme. “Each one
gives you a different perspective. As a project manager
you are on the ground, you have to understand the local context, talk to local farmers and other stakeholders, and take direct decisions about project actions. As
a monitor, you are in the middle, between the beneficiaries and the Commission. This can be a tricky position as your main role is to gather information for the
Commission, your employer, but you also get to know
and have a lot of sympathy for the beneficiaries. As a
European Commission official, your main responsibility is to apply the rules and, of course, make sure the
money is spent correctly.”
With the benefit of these different insights into the programme, Frank is even more convinced than ever of
the merits of LIFE. “I am totally convinced that LIFE is
the right approach: in term of its bottom-up approach;
the scale of the projects, and the important recognition
it gives to projects.
“Undoubtedly, there are major challenges ahead. In the
coming decades the pressure for intensification of land
use is likely to continue and it is vital that we secure
land for nature conservation. This is the approach of
LIFE and Natura 2000 and this must remain the priority. But I am optimistic. With LIFE, we manage to do a
lot with very limited resources. Everyone involved feels
a great sense of ownership of the programme and a
culture of optimism and achievement has developed
that provides a strong momentum for the future.”

“The role of the National Contact Point (NCP) is to
help potential applicants with applying for LIFE+
funds,” says Andrzej Muter, the NCP for Poland.
The Polish NCP performs this task in many different
ways. It publicises the programme through media, a
dedicated website and direct advertising; once a year the
NCP organises a special event for potential applicants:
the ‘LIFE+ Information Day’. “It gives participants the
possibility to meet previous and present LIFE beneficiaries and provides an opportunity to exchange information
among organisations and institutions currently running
LIFE+ projects,” says Andrzej.
Additionally, the NCP organises several writers’ workshops during each LIFE+ call in order to provide applicants with the information they need to make a successful application. His role as an NCP has allowed Andrzej
to develop professionally, both in nature protection and
environmental issues. “Working contacts with potential
applicants who are enthusiastic about their ideas have
naturally increased my enthusiasm in several fields of
interest. It is of course hard work to develop a concept
into an acceptable project, but looking at the results, one
can say that it is absolutely worth the effort,” he says.

High points
Looking back over his time as an NCP, Andrzej says that
there have been many highlights. He points to “the feeling of
satisfaction after a fruitful writers’ seminar, the excitement
when learning that an interesting project we were working
on has received LIFE+ co-financing, the feeling of pride when
we see the positive impact on nature and the environment
of the project activities – these are day-to-day highlights.”

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Andrzej Muter
One event, however, does stand out: the LIFE+ Committee meeting for the 2009 call. “Only two years after the
first LIFE+ call of 2007 when Poland used up only 12%
of its allocation and after a year-and-a-half of hard work
as a new Polish NCP, our efforts were rewarded with the
selection of 11 Polish projects, most of them in the Nature strand. This result meant that almost €12 million of
LIFE+ money would strengthen the biodiversity of Polish
Natura 2000 sites. It also meant that Poland, for the first
time, exceeded its LIFE+ allocation by 16%. This was extremely good news for Polish nature!”
The Polish government responded to the first LIFE+ call by
handing over the role of Polish NCP to the National Fund for
Environmental Protection and Water Management (NFEP) in
September 2008. Moreover, at the same time the NFEP took
over the responsibility for LIFE+ implementation in Poland.
For that reason the NFEP has not only been performing duties of the NCP, but also has developed a unique system
of co-financing LIFE+ projects from its own domestic funds.
“The results have been impressive,” Andrzej says. “Up to
now we have signed 28 agreements for co-financing 26
Polish and three international LIFE+ projects with NFEP
involvement of €24 million, and EU co-financing of €31.5
million. This is a great relief for the Polish environment.”
Andrzej and his colleagues have even invented a saying:
“LIFE+ and NFEP funds are a perfect fit for environment/
nature.”

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The monitor
Following the progress of open and closed projects
is one of the main responsibilities of the LIFE monitoring team (MoT): an external team that works
under contract to the European Commission for
the duration of each programme.
Georgia Valaoras

Georgia Valaoras is a LIFE monitor and MoT regional coordinator for Greece, Cyprus and Bulgaria. She explains that
the role of the MoT is to “facilitate the good implementation of projects and provide accurate and reliable information for the LIFE Unit.”

To achieve this, Georgia and her colleagues have to undertake “a whole range of activities, including reading reports, visiting project sites, advising beneficiaries, dealing
with local authorities, solving problems, attending events,
explaining LIFE project management procedures and networking with other projects or initiatives that are relevant
to the themes of the projects.”
One of the biggest challenges for monitors is to assess
whether a project action has actually been carried out
or not. In theory, this sounds pretty straightforward,

The monitoring team coordinator
The activities of the more than 100 LIFE monitors are coordinated by a multinational
central team based in Brussels. Nicolas Tavitian is part of this team, and is responsible
for coordinating activities falling under the LIFE Environment Policy and Governance
component.
“I am one of six members of the ‘central
team’. Together, we do our best to coordinate this vast network of monitoring experts, spread across nine regional teams.
That involves channelling information between the Commission and the monitors
and making sure that all monitors are working according to the same standards and
methodology.
“One of the greatest challenges we are
confronted with is the sheer diversity of
our work. Apart from environmental expertise in a great variety of sectors, we also
have to advise project beneficiaries on the

EU’s complex rules and analyse projects’ finances, so you need a good head for rules,
for numbers and for accounts, as well as
a somewhat meticulous disposition - and
we need to be able to help the monitors on
each of these subjects.”
Within this large team of experts, a huge
reservoir of experience and professional
expertise has now been accumulated,
which Nicolas believes helps to enrich the
entire programme. “There are few programmes comparable to LIFE in terms of
its size and scope. It is a privilege to be
part of such a programme and to work

with environmentalists from almost every
European country.
“We have the opportunity to meet in person
at our twice-yearly reunions, which is always
a pleasure, even if us environmentalists are
still a little jealous of our conservationist
colleagues: when they visit a project, they
wear rubber boots for a brisk walk into the
wilderness, whereas we put on a suit and tie
for meetings and visits at the factory.”
Nicolas Tavitian (middle)
and some of the LIFE monitors

but as Georgia explains, the reality can sometimes be
very different.
“Once, I was asked to quantify the planting success of
more than 48 000 trees, on a rocky slope, at 3:00 pm,
in temperatures of 42°C. The project team consisted of
public servants who went home at 1:30 pm (it was a Friday!), so they left me alone to find and count the surviving trees! Another time, while visiting a wetland project,
I could not easily access a canal dug by the project team
through thick reed beds – so the beneficiary said: ‘It
doesn’t matter, you can see it on Google Earth.’”
Despite these challenges, Georgia enjoys her work and
feels lucky to be part of such a highly motivated group
of people. “The best part of my job is that I get to work
with such a wide range of people: research scientists,
engineers, local government agents, educators and others, all of whom are working to improve the environment.
Interacting with these people is very rewarding and it
continually reassures me that I have chosen the right
profession. Most of the people I work with are enthusiastic about their work, trying to do a good job, and striving
to be professional in their endeavours. Of course there
are exceptions, but here also there is an opportunity to
reinforce the importance of this work, and the future
benefits for their environment, their land, their future.”
Georgia has been monitoring LIFE projects since 2001 and
has come to recognize the valuable and sometimes indispensable contribution of the LIFE programme: “LIFE Nature
projects in Greece constitute ‘oases’ of organised, targeted,
flexible, and financially viable conservation projects. Very
often, LIFE is the only source of funding for the implementation of concrete conservation actions in the field.”

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team members: allocating and clarifying tasks, answering
queries and sorting out administrative issues. I enjoy this;
it’s nice to be at the hub of things, even if it’s difficult sometimes to see the fruits of my labour.”

Monique Braem

The communicator
Communication is another important aspect of the
LIFE programme, and in particular ensuring that the
results of LIFE projects are disseminated and used
as widely as possible. This task falls to the LIFE external communications team (CoT), which works in
close cooperation with the LIFE Unit and the monitoring team.
Monique Braem, Assistant to the team Coordinator, explains that “the role of the CoT is to assist the Commission in promoting the LIFE programme at European level;
to support the funded projects in their own communication
activities and to publicise project results and achievements
so that they serve as a showcase for other projects, for
specific sectors of industry, nature conservation networks,
and other potential user groups.”
Having joined the CoT in 2002, Monique holds the honour
of being the longest serving member of the team. She regrets that this doesn’t make her feel any younger, but it
does mean she is often looked to as the ‘memory’ of the
team. “Because of this, and in my role of assisting with coordination, I spend a lot of time interacting with the other

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Monique’s central role in interacting with the other 15
members of this multi-national and multi-skilled communications team is made easier, no doubt, by her impressive
language skills, being fluent in English, German, French and
Spanish. She also liaises with officials from the LIFE Unit
and with the monitoring team, which assists in channelling
information directly from the projects.
The CoT transforms this project information into a range
of user-friendly products, including project summaries,
fact sheets, newsletters and thematic brochures, which
are published in printed format and on the LIFE website.
“We pride ourselves on the quality of all our outputs. The
CoT stands out for me as being a real example of team
spirit and motivation. Everyone contributes to the success of what we do.”
Monique adds that “it is nice to meet project beneficiaries and stakeholders at events as it gives me the opportunity to let them know about all the backstage work
that goes into producing and maintaining the website,
LIFENews and our printed publications.
“The feedback is generally very positive. One of the most
successful publications to date has been the brochure,
‘Getting more from less’, which looked at the results of
LIFE projects in the area of sustainable production. This

is a clearly a topical issue, but it
also helps that the brochure has a
catchy title, which helps to attract
people’s attention. And then of
course there was the article, ‘Actor
Antonio Banderas supports Iberian
lynx’, which caused a real explosion of hits when we published it
on the LIFE website. Okay, maybe
it was more Banderas enthusiasts
than lynx enthusiasts, but it certainly helped to attract attention.”
Monique has worked on other European programmes in the past, including the Leader programme, but she was glad to get
the opportunity to apply her knowledge and experience
to LIFE. “Like most people, I care about the environment and it is great to be able to make a contribution, however small, through my work. Generally
people think I’m lucky to work in such a sector. When I
am travelling it is always nice to see the LIFE logo and
to know that you are part of this bigger picture.
“This job has helped me to better understand and appreciate environmental issues, but also to develop as a
person and to acquire new skills. A particular highlight was
my first ever presentation in public, which was at a meeting
of newly selected LIFE projects in Spain. The presentation
was in Spanish, which is not my mother tongue, but fortunately it went very well. The only snag was that I used the word
‘asistenta’, which means cleaning lady, instead of ‘asistente (assistant)’. The participants were very discreet about it, but not my
colleagues, who used this for months after to force me to clean
their desks.”

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2 MEET THE COMMUNITIES
LIFE co-funding has helped launch community-led initiatives across the
EU â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and in neighbouring countries. Regional and local authorities, cities,
towns and villages, networks and associations have all taken part in and
benefitted from projects to safeguard nature and improve the environment that simply would not have been possible without LIFE.

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LIFE and the regional record-breaker
The autonomous community of Valencia in Spain (“Generalitat Valenciana”) is one of the EU regions to have run the
most LIFE Nature projects. Juan Jimenez, head of biodiversity services, has been at the helm for all of those projects.
“We are the European
region with possibly the
highest number of LIFE
Nature projects – 15 since
the programme was launched
in 1992. I’m not sure why this is
so, except that our biodiversity services department was
established 25 years ago (in 1987) so that by the time
LIFE was launched, we were already established: We had a
lot of ideas and a vast amount of biodiversity to take care
of… But we had almost no money. So it seemed as though
LIFE was waiting for us.

might have three or more directors with different agendas.
Each LIFE project, however, was defined in advance, so the
project actions and deadlines gave us an important, stable
framework to continue the work.

has provided us with added motivation and the opportunities to carry out work that would otherwise have not been
done. Moreover, our conservation work is seen around Europe and this is important to us.

Moreover, our [regional] budget was and is very small.
But thanks to LIFE, we could increase staffing to levels
that enable concrete nature conservation actions to be
carried out.

For me personally, the most successful LIFE projects were
the plant micro-reserve (PMR) projects (see box) and also
the projects targeting the conservation of the Audouin’s
gull (Larus audouinii) (e.g. LIFE02 NAT/E/008608) . This is
mainly because of the impact these projects had on people,
that is, in terms of raising awareness for conservation of
endemic species; and for the protection of local biodiversity
‘hotspots’.”

Concerning our day-to-day work, there are no fixed working hours for us: we love this work. We’re public sector employees and we’re not paid high salaries. LIFE, however,

There was so much to be done. There were no recovery
plans for species and no habitat restoration actions, surveys or monitoring had been carried out. LIFE gave us the
major technical know-how to make improvements and to
create a species and habitats knowledge base for the Valencia region that without the projects would have taken
decades more to build. Also, several of the technical experts that started worked on the early LIFE projects are
still working with us today on ongoing projects.

Pioneering plant micro-reserves
“Valencia has a very high diversity of plant species. It was
therefore an ideal location for what was to become Europe’s first network of PMRs: Twelve of the region’s 355
endemic plant species are included in Annexes II and IV
of the Habitats Directive; and 150 species are considered
rare or threatened.

LIFE brings stability
Within a constantly-changing political environment, such
as for a Spanish region, LIFE was also a stabilising factor. For example, over the course of a five-year project we

Juan Jimenez

Emilio Laguna

When the projects ended we had established 77 PMRs.
Today the region has more than 285, which also means
that we have protected all of Valencia’s endangered plant
species populations, as they are all found within the micro-reserves.

Plant micro-reserves allow a close monitoring of target
species by trained staff. Thanks to LIFE we’ve been able
to change the conservation strategy here from passive
to active. Moreover, we’ve been able to establish ex-situ
labs and nurseries in order to support the micro-reserves.
Finally, I’m very satisfied that the micro-reserve concept
has now spread throughout the world and I’m especially
proud that, as a result of our work, a separate initiative
has resulted in the creation of a landowners’ association for the micro-reserves. This is the best recognition
that I have of the success of the LIFE projects.”

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A city-wide environment
of innovation
Juanma Revuelta Pérez

Valencia has also been a pioneer at the local – as well as the regional – level. In 1999, the municipal
government began ValenciaInnova, an initiative that has helped turn innovative ideas into successful
LIFE Environment projects. Juanma Revuelta Pérez, who launched ValenciaInnova, explains why it has
worked so well.
“In 1995 I started working as a private consultant in Spain
for some LIFE projects. Four years later, I was invited to
work for the recently-formed Valencia municipality
innovation department (ValenciaInnova) to develop different types of projects, including
LIFE projects.
It was very difficult for the municipality to apply for EU funds:
There was almost no capacity,
no know-how, and no information about LIFE funding. For that reason, ValenciaInnova developed
a simple methodology
that provided a platform
to tackle Valencia’s environmental problems.
The motto was: “The
city of Valencia is open
to your ideas.”

We set up information days to show some LIFE project
results and examples from other EU Member States;
and established partnerships in order to solve specific
environmental problems. [Within four years, the number
of approved projects increased exponentially…]. In just
one year (2003), for example, the Valencia municipality
had five projects approved, which was more than several
countries combined for the year!
The innovation office was sometimes a project partner,
but the main beneficiaries were public companies, or the
municipality of Valencia. This successful methodology is
now taught at the European Institute of Public Administration (EIPA) in Maastricht. In Valencia everyone knows
LIFE – from politicians to citizens.

Number 70 bus
Thanks to LIFE, Valencia now has a better environment. For example, the LIFE ECOBUS project (LIFE02
ENV/E/000253) had a huge impact on people’s lives.

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Valencia as a territory has been very successful in implementing LIFE Environment and Nature projects that have originated from regional and municipal
authorities. The many projects include a number of award-winners (e.g. ECOBUS - a ‘Best’ LIFE Environment project: 2004-2005), and together the range
of actions carried out with LIFE’s support have had a very positive impact on
Valencia’s wildlife and natural resources and the lives of its citizens.

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There was a huge problem with used cooking oil, especially during the ‘Fallas’ (a very popular fiesta), where
people typically fry sweets. After use, the oil used to be
thrown down the toilets. We proposed to solve the problem by recycling the used oil into biodiesel. The project
was so successful among Valencians that, one day at
10 pm, I got a telephone call from the security guard at
the Valencia municipality building. He told me that there
was a woman outside the entrance wanting to donate a
bottle of used oil to the Ecobus project. I went there and
talked to her, to explain that there were special places
for leaving the oil. She replied: “I know that. But I want
this oil to be used on the number 70 bus that I take
every day!”

Creating opportunities

Why Valencia?

I see LIFE as a catalyst for companies and public authorities. For example the ECOvitrum project (LIFE08
ENV/E/000148) transformed an ecological problem
into a business. We produced a commercial silica product
that has high market value from electronic waste. I think
before applying for LIFE funding it would be useful for
all private companies to have a business plan in place to
ensure the project is feasible after the project has ended.

People ask why Valencia has been so successful in receiving LIFE funding? In my opinion, it’s because we have
the ability to communicate very well with the population.

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(as Director General of
the Valencian Regional Office) and everywhere I go
I talk about the LIFE programme. I’m a sort of a
LIFE ambassador.

One of the main advantages I see of LIFE funding
is not the actual amount
of money, but the opportunity to have private-public
partnerships. It can be very beneficial to have, say, public
companies working together with universities and private
companies. Moreover, the concept is more democratic
than, for example, the FP7 [The Seventh Framework Programme (2007-2013)]. LIFE (Environment) funding is
available to everyone across the EU – from an SME to a
multinational company, a national, regional or local authority etc. Finding 50% of co-financing is also not easy,
particularly for some countries. This means you have to
make considerable efforts to ensure a project is successful. LIFE, however, is a smart use of funding. It is money
well spent: supporting innovation, talent and technologies; and helping to solve environmental problems.

From a personal point of view LIFE has had a major impact on my career. Thanks to LIFE, I work in Brussels

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LIFE... is money well spent:
supporting innovation, talent and
technologies; and helping to solve
environmental problems

MEET THE COMMUNITIES

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And of course we’ve had the support of the mayor, Rita
Barberá, for all the project objectives. Following our success, I’ve been approached by other European mayors
asking how to go about applying for LIFE funding. I tell
them they need to have an idea for a good project… LIFE
in Valencia has proved to be attractive to everyone and is
widely known. Now, thanks to LIFE, Valencia the city and
Valencia the region are more sustainable.”

The City of Klagenfurt in Carinthia, Austria is showing how local authorities can build a beneficial partnership with the LIFE programme to improve the environment. Here we meet Wolfgang Hafner, the man who
has led all five of the city’s LIFE Environment projects to date.

Wolfgang Hafner is head of the department of Environmental Protection at the City of Klagenfurt. The department’s responsibilities include “noise pollution, air
pollution, soil and groundwater protection, waste management, licensing procedures for enterprises, public
information campaigns and nature protection,” explains
Mr Hafner, before adding that for the last two years “an
additional issue is climate protection – to reduce CO2
emissions.”
The City of Klagenfurt is just starting its fifth LIFE Environment project (see box), all of which Mr Hafner has
project managed. He explains the genesis of a fruitful
relationship with the LIFE programme: “When I became
head of the department at the end of 2002, the main
environmental problem in Klagenfurt was air pollution.
It was also the beginning of monitoring of fine dust and
particulate matter and Klagenfurt suffered from a lot of
incidences [of ppm limits being exceeded] - there was
bad press about this and so on. No-one in Austria, noone in Europe, this was my feeling, knew how to tackle
this air pollution, this particulate matter. Then I remem-

bered the LIFE programme, saw that there was a call
open, asked some project partners where I had contacts
- Technical University Graz - and said ‘hey what do you
think?’ We had a key meeting and we submitted a project
together with the City of Graz who had already experience with LIFE projects.”
This first project, KAPA GS, developed a computer model
that enables identification of PM 10 particulate matter
pollution at a resolution of 10 x 10 m at every location in
Klagenfurt. It also developed an air quality plan for the
city. “This is still the basis for our quality management,”
notes Mr Hafner proudly. “This was 2005. I’m quite sure
we were the first city in Europe to have such a detailed
plan and map,” he believes.
“With the computer model we were able to calculate the
effect on air pollution. This was important because then
we could make a cost-benefit analysis and say to the
politicians: if you do that, the result is that and so on.
It’s really a very important tool and it would have been
impossible to create such a tool without EU funding.”

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As well as the fact that the involvement of Brussels
concentrates minds, he says that for the politicians,
LIFE makes it “more easy to commit mitigation options that not everyone likes, for example a traffic ban,
because they can say it’s only a trial and let’s see if
and how it works.”

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they have also made a good contribution to the environment. They are proud of it. They had fun and an
interesting experience and also [made] a contribution
too.”

Klagenfurt’s ongoing commitment to the LIFE as a
source of funding for its environmental projects suggests that things have gone well to date, but, cautions Mr Hafner, “I have to admit that I’m only successful as long as there are no financial losses. There
remains always a risk. If one of the projects would fail
and we had to reimburse
money… I guess then we
would have a very tricky
situation.”

It would have been
impossible to create such a tool
without EU funding

Selling LIFE to the politicians
and the people
The success of Klagenfurt’s initial LIFE project made
it much easier to win the support of the city’s decision-makers for further projects. “The politicians, the
government – local government, regional government – they like these projects because they have
a platform with press conferences and international
acceptance and so on,” explains Mr Hafner, adding
that “through these LIFE projects they understand
the problem better. With a LIFE project you can
transport a lot of information and acceptance on this
(governmental) level.”

He has also learned from
the initial LIFE project
the importance of keeping public opinion on side. “We learned that we should
start informing the public [about the aims of the project] as soon as possible.” Another important lesson
was to focus on the positives, rather than “negative
news. It was too exhausting to always say the air
quality is so bad and you can suffer from cancer and
lung damage and so on - people do not like to hear
this. It’s better to give positive formulations, to say
support us to improve and strengthen the public transport system: this might be cheaper, might be more
comfortable and additionally you save the environment,” recounts Mr Hafner.
This is the approach the city is taking with one of the
latest LIFE+ projects, CEMOBIL, which is trialling the
use of electric cars. “It’s working very well, people like
to test them,” says Mr Hafner. “When they give back
the car after one week, they really have the feeling that

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MEET THE COMMUNITIES

The LIFE programme has been beneficial in other
ways too: “I really appreciate in a LIFE project that of course you have to submit a proposal with detailed
objectives - but this is the frame, and the structure is
really very flexible. You are able to make changes, to
make amendments if necessary, not only in financial
issues, but also in technical issues,” says Mr Hafner.
This has been particularly helpful with regard to the
ongoing CMA+ project, which is investigating the use
of liquid calcium-magnesium acetate as an alternative to gritting in winter. “Within CMA+, London contacted us, they said: we have a fine dust problem, we
need mitigation options, what do you think about CMA,
could it work in London? We
advised them and they did
a trial for half a year, [they]
were successful and [they
gave us] the results. It was
really great because it was a
very important input for us.
I know other EU-funded programmes and they are so formal, so inflexible. It is really bad, because you cannot take into consideration
new approaches and new knowledge.”

Public authority managers, Geneviève Magnon and Jean-Noël Resch reflect on many years of European
Union support for the restoration of the Drugeon valley, an important wetland site in Franche-Comté. Their
involvement spans some 20 years, starting with the LIFE Drugeon project (1992-1996).

Jean-Noël Resch

The Drugeon, a tributary of the Doubs in the Jura ranges,
flows through a very important high-altitude wetland site
in the Franche-Comté region of eastern France. It’s a Ramsar wetland of international importance; and a Natura
2000 site supporting some 30 habitats – including an important (980 ha) area of bog complexes, including priority
active raised bogs and bog woodlands – and outstanding
fauna, notably at least 23 threatened or endangered bird
species.
Despite its ecological value, the Drugeon river basin has
been subjected to serious disturbances that have degraded significant areas of the wetlands.

Conservation and management programmes for the
area come under the responsibility of the community
of 10 small communes of the Vallée du Drugeon et
Plateau de Frasne. The public authority was the co-

ordinator of the LIFE Drugeon project – and the initiator of the conservation works for the whole valley. It
is also responsible for the administration of all local
activities for its 5 000 or so inhabitants.

THE PROJECT
The 1992-96 LIFE project was part of a comprehensive plan to manage the ecology
and hydrology of the Drugeon basin in response to the degradation already apparent at the beginning of the 1990s. Engineering works were carried out to restore
the river meanders to a more natural state to benefit the peat biotopes and also
to increase the river’s capacity to retain water during floods. The beneficiary also
acquired some of the most humid sites in order to safeguard them and to restore
water levels in those that had already been adversely affected. Efforts were also
invested in providing information and gaining the support of local interest groups.

Geneviève Magnon
“I’ve been working for the community of communes
in Frasne since 1993. I’m a biologist. I was hired first
as a technician on the LIFE project and then later I
became project manager, following the retirement of
the original manager.
An important part of our work with the LIFE project
involved raising awareness of the need to do something to reverse the practices, carried out over the
past 50 years, which had resulted in the ecological
problems, notably the drying up of the wetlands.
Importantly, you must remember that we are responsible to the electors of the communes (villages) and
to be honest, back then they weren’t at all interested
in what we wanted to do with the project.
There was a lot of work for us to do to try to change
people’s negative viewpoint (this was mainly concern
over the cost of the planned works). We explained
that this wasn’t going to cost them anything. We held
numerous public meetings with local interest groups,
including the farmers, foresters, fishermen and hunters. It was quite difficult and there were some extremely ‘noisy’ meetings. There were two farmers in
particular, who remained vehemently opposed to the
project. The public relations work is still continuing
today, so we still haven’t won over everybody.
Fortunately, Christian Bouday, the then President of
the Community, believed absolutely in the project
and was able to pass on this belief to the electorate.
This enabled me to focus on the technical aspects of
the project. For me personally, we can be most proud
of the (4 km) restoration of river meanders on the
Drugeon.

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LIFE was also the start of many things that have continued. For example, we still organise conferences and these
are attended mostly by local people. The little logo that
was designed for the LIFE project has been adopted by
the community – you can see it on official letterheads, car
stickers etc. And the newsletter, ‘La Lettre du Drugeon’,
which was started under LIFE, has become our community
newsletter.
Finally, even though not everyone is on our side, we’ve
made considerable progress in our relationship with the
professional associations. We’ve seen a significant sea
change, in particular, among the farmers. They ask, for
example, about the environmental impact of certain
planned measures on specific species… This is something
that never happened in the past.”

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Nowadays, there’s no longer big opposition to what we
are doing. Also we’ve moved on from the phase of the
major remedial works to doing some of things that make
the project more visible to people such as putting up
information panels and other signposting, constructing
footpaths, nature trails and viewing platforms.
I’d like to draw attention to the continuation of the river
restoration works after LIFE – over almost 30 km – that’s
an enormous achievement. And behind these works are,
of course, the habitat and species’ improvements we’re
seeing today on some of the areas that had become
significantly dried-out, as well as huge improvements in
water quality.”

Jean-Noël Resch
“I’m a hydrobiologist. I was hired in 1999, with particular responsibility for overseeing the hydrological works
that were needed in the valley. These were started under LIFE and continue today under the programme for
the re-naturalisation of the Drugeon and restoration and
management of the basin (1997-2013). This (€2.8 million) programme is financed by the EU, as well as by local, regional and national authorities.
I think it’s difficult for the people who live here to really understand the need for nature conservation – as
for them it’s quite ‘normal’, almost banal, to have at
least 250 different species of birds. I’m not from here
originally. I’m from Strasbourg, Alsace. Perhaps this has
helped me to better understand how ‘special’ it is and
how important it is to maintain this biological diversity.
It was difficult in the beginning – there was considerable criticism, notably that the project was too technical.

LIFE’s help for the forests
of the Holy Community
of Mount Athos
The Mount Athos peninsula in northern Greece is home to a Holy Community made up of 20 monasteries
and 12 cloisters, as well as individual ‘cells’ and hermitages – some 2 000 monks in total. Father Gregorios
Gregoriatis was responsible for a LIFE project that helped rehabilitate the oak forests on Mount Athos.
“We in the Holy Community of Mount Athos have special privileged administrative status in Greece. We follow
the Orthodox Monastic faith which based on a quiet and
peaceful way of life. Because we are the owners of the
whole Mount Athos peninsula we have very close relations
with our natural environment.

aligned with the way that the EU’s environmental policy
works. For us, money is not a factor that drives our exploitation of our environment. This is a fundamental principle
in our constitution so we have never chosen to be organised in any commercial form as a Community to generate
income from our land.

Indeed, nature conservation principles
within The Holy Community’s constitution date back more than 1000 years
to when the first monasteries were built
here. These principles are enshrined as an
integral part of our lives and all of the
Mount Athos monasteries operate in the
same way.

We prefer to use time-honoured land management
methods and we take more account of the impact of our
methods, rather than their cost in time or labour. These
principles have served us well through the centuries and
we expect to maintain such approaches in the long term.

THE PROJECT
The FRAINETTO WOODS Mnt. ATHOS project
achieved the long-term protection of priority forest habitats through a series of thinning measures that raised the forest canopy in order to
mitigate fire risks.

We believe that the ‘greater good’ is more important than
us as individuals and these spiritual beliefs are very much

However, we do acknowledge that the environment
is susceptible to change and we have seen that these
changes can create very real threats to our way of life
from forest fire risks. Our monasteries are isolated and
many are surrounded by forests. After the bad fires of

the 1990s we took a decision that we would need to do
more than in the past to protect the monasteries.

Forest action
A plan of infrastructure works was agreed by the Community to reduce fire risks and help fight any fires that
did start. We increased the number of places to store
water by creating reservoirs in the forest areas and we
strengthened our supply of fire-fighting equipment. Look
out stations were established at high points and we set up
a kind of rapid-reaction communication network between
the monasteries that could be used for raising the alarm
about fire threats. In addition, roads and tracks were cut
through the forests to help us reach fires quicker to stop
them from spreading.
We were able to do much of this work ourselves using our
own resources and we knew that if we could address the
overall structure of the forest canopy this would make a
big difference to reducing the risk from fire. We also knew
that raising the height of the forest canopy and opening
up the forest to more sunlight would have a beneficial
effect on biodiversity. What’s more it would improve the
quality of the natural wood stock and enhance our woodlands’ landscape properties.
Aesthetic features of the environment are positive for the
soul and an attractive landscape possesses spiritual attributes.
We wanted to protect the natural woodland structures
that had been created on the peninsula of Mount Athos.
We wanted to maintain a mix of species and plants and
we wanted to have a range of different ages because, as
in any community, there are children, middle aged and
elderly members. We wanted this for our forests and we
asked LIFE to help us.

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For the LIFE project implementation, I was supported by
colleagues from the Greek Biotope Wetland Centre and we
also gained a lot of very useful help from our subcontractors, Christos Georgiadis and Stefanos Fotiou, at Business
Architects Consultancy S.A.

Common goals
LIFE’s support was welcomed because we could all work
together towards the same aim. We in the Holy Community were able to use the funds to manage the woodlands
to meet our needs, and this could be done in a way that
reinforced the long-term quality of the oak woodland ecosystem on Mount Athos. The oak forests are considered
worthy of protection because few other habitants of the
oak species Quercus frainetto and Quercus ilex exist on
this scale in Greece.
Following the tried and tested method of other LIFE Nature
projects, we first undertook a scientific study of the forests
so as to ensure that our work was based on a sound foundation of environmental knowledge. The study identified
areas where the most benefits could be achieved through
thinning actions in the oak forests.
A lot of mathematics was applied to determine the final
selection of sites for thinning and this led to a mosaic of
actions across the Holy Community’s land. As part of the
project we organised a training programme for monasteries and forest contractors to set out a consistent approach
for the habitat management plan.
I was very impressed by the management plan and LIFE’s
approach to funding the work we did. We had at times in
the past had to deal with laws and regulations that made
implementing forest management actions quite difficult,
but with LIFE it was easy. We were able to follow the plan
that was agreed at the start. This helped us to organise

and carry out our activities through a very constructive
approach.

Father Gregorios
Gregoriatis

A helping hand
We were also appreciative of the flexibility that the LIFE
programme provided because at first we had filled in the
application form as if we were a private sector organisation. This meant that we would have had to find a large
amount of financial insurance to cover the project costs
before we could do any work. Our financial reserves are
very limited so the forest plan could have been in jeopardy
if the LIFE team had not come to our rescue and helped us
change our classification on the form to better reflect our
actual non-commercial status.
LIFE trusted us, accepted our special circumstances and
helped us to realise what we wanted to do; this meant a
great deal to us in the Holy Community. We hope that we
have been able to honour their trust and we would like to
find a way to work again with LIFE in the future because
we still have a lot of the special oak habitat here that could
benefit from further partnership approaches with LIFE.”
Project number: LIFE03 NAT/GR/000093
Title: FRAINETTO WOODS Mnt.ATHOS - Rehabilitation of Coppice Quercus frainetto woods (9280)
and Quercus ilex woods (9340) to high forest
Beneficiary: The Holy Community of Mount Athos
Contact: Christos Georgiadis
Email: cgeorgiadis@gmail.com

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Positive partnership memories
from a neighbouring state
Uri Nusinow is financial director of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies (AIES) in Israel. He says

Uri Nusinow

his involvement with a LIFE Third Country (LIFE TCY) project that promoted a trans-boundary approach to
environmental issues “has made a significant difference to me and my work”.

“I live on Kibbutz Ketura in the Southern Arava region of
Israel, about 30 minutes north of the Red Sea resort town
of Eilat. The Arava is a beautiful desert area, bordering
Jordan on the east and Egypt on the south.
I am 57 years old, originally from Los Angeles and I have
lived in Israel since 1977. My wife and I have six grown
children and six grandchildren. Two of my daugh-

THE PROJECT
The SASWMP project developed a treatment strategy to effectively handle solid and liquid agricultural waste generated in a project territory taking
in southern Israel and Jordan.

ters and their families live on the kibbutz, enabling us to
enjoy three of our grandchildren close by.
My work as the financial director of the AIES involves
supporting academic and research activity focused on
encouraging trans-boundary environmental studies that
bring Arab and Jewish students together. The aim of our
work is to help us all learn how to cooperatively deal with
environmental issues. The vision of the institute is based
on the premise that ‘nature knows no borders’.

New LIFE experiences
I worked for four years as the project manager of a LIFE
project involved with developing a waste management
plan here in the Southern Arava. This involved coordinating new infrastructure and constructed wetlands for
the region. We also did ‘coexistence’ work with Jewish
and Arab Israeli high school pupils, using the platform
of environmental awareness and we ran a training programme for Jordanian and Israeli farmers on sustainable agriculture systems.

Work on the LIFE project gave me a lot of new experiences and engaged me and my colleagues who worked
closely with organisations on both sides of the border
between Israel and Jordan. Such project activity has continued to positively impact my work to this day. I have
since managed an EU Peace & Environmental Partnerships Project (PEPP), and I am now also involved with an
International Research Staff Exchange Scheme (IRSES)
project. This is named Transbasin and the Arava Institute
is leading a consortium made up of EU countries, Jordan
and the Palestinian Authority.
My present work with the Arava Institute is definitely influenced by each of the LIFE project’s various elements.
For example, part of my tasks today include direct reporting to funding agencies, such as the EU, USAID, and
others. Perhaps the greatest lesson I learned from LIFE is
the importance of transparency with the funding agency.
The funder wants you to succeed with your project and
you need to respect their role as a stakeholder by providing them with the reporting that is needed.
As in any complex long-term project, there is a need for
continuous problem solving and creative thinking. When
the problems and issues inevitably arise, I soon learnt
that it’s critical to keep the funders engaged with the issues so that they understand the context. This transparent approach enabled me to get help from the funders to
resolve potentially problematic situations.

Sense of satisfaction
One of the things that I am most satisfied about from my
involvement with LIFE is the tangible results that I can see
from the project. For instance, the creation of a safe and
organic shelter at the constructed wetland sites for migrating birds is a major environmental benefit that reinforces
the region’s special character as a passageway for migra-

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tion. This attracts bird watchers, thereby expanding the
existing eco-tourism opportunities in the region and helps
diversify the local economy. Likewise, in the project’s cross
border sustainable agriculture tasks, we made a real difference in moving closer towards joint ecological solutions
with our neighbours in the shared desert valley. This transboundary approach with continued Jordanian-Israeli cooperation has far reaching implications for greatly increasing
environmental sustainability.
Today, there is a Long Term Ecological Research cross
border platform for the Arava rift valley, a joint IsraeliJordanian water forum, and joint Israeli-Jordanian science
education programme for high school students. All of these
successful developments have been helped by our experiences with the LIFE project.
LIFE’s contribution to the ‘Common Paths programme’, for
instance, has led to a new programme (funded by USAID)
involving four pairs of Arab and Jewish schools, and focusing on environmental education and Arab-Jewish cooperation. I personally believe that this type of cooperation is
absolutely crucial for the future of our region. It is fulfilling
to know that I was able to have played a part in helping to
make these achievements happen.
Other positive things that have resulted from the [SASWMP] project include a local agricultural business (Ardom
Regional Enterprises) deciding to take on the work we set
up in composting. This company has farm interests covering eight kibbutzim and they are now managing the composting centre that we helped to launch through LIFE.

Reflecting on the benefits
Looking back, I can think of three key things that for me
made all the hard work with the financial administration
worthwhile. Firstly, the LIFE project has built capacity for

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the region. It has proven that we have the combined ability to implement complex environmental projects, involving infrastructure, education and monitoring in partnership
with each other.
Secondly, the success of the project has enabled the initiation of new projects that are also further improving our environment here and thereby the quality of life for all the regions’ residents, including our neighbours across the border.
Through the dissemination task of the project, the municipality and our partners raised the general awareness of the
region’s residents and farmers about environmental issues
and waste management. We did this by creating an understanding of the value of waste as an economic resource.
Lastly, I personally gained tremendous confidence and new
abilities through learning how to manage an EU project. I
networked with numerous individuals in Israel and Jordan
in the fields related to the project.
For us here in Southern Arava, LIFE is a good thing and I
can imagine there will be many others like me, who live
in areas neighbouring Europe, that have benefitted from
the EU’s environmental programme over the last 20 years.”

Frédéric Hébert is Director of the Regional Marine Pollution Emergency Response Centre for the Mediterranean Sea (REMPEC). Based in Malta, REMPEC’s mandate is to assist in the development of coastal states’
national capabilities to respond to marine pollution incidents and in the preparation and development of
bilateral or multilateral operational agreements between neighbouring states. His job has provided him
with an insight into how useful EU programmes such as LIFE can be for supporting environmental actions
in the wider European region.
“I have not always worked with environmental management issues.
I was born in Paris and after
graduating in law and politics,
I joined the French Navy Supply Corps where I served up
to the rank of Commander.
Then I worked in the staff
of the Admiral, Préfet Maritime de la Méditerranée.
This was the French national Focal Point for REMPEC and it was here that my
environmental career took
shape because my naval duties at the Admiralty involved
being in charge of pollution preparedness and response.

Moving from the navy into the civil service at France’s
Ministry of Finance, I retained my involvement with
the management of maritime incidents. I dealt with
numerous major events, such as environmental disasters caused by the oil tanker ‘Erika’ in 1999 off the
coast of France, and the sinking of the chemical ship
‘Ievoli Sun’ in 2000.
During my time at the Ministry I also remember the
serious environmental problems caused by oil spilling from the stricken ‘Prestige’ tanker. This was one
of the largest environmental disasters in Europe in
the last decade. It polluted thousands of kilometres
of European coastline and more than 1 000 beaches
on the Spanish, French and Portuguese coast were
affected. As with most maritime accidents, the impacts also extended to harm local fishing and tourism
industries.

REMPEC LIFE
I joined the team at REMPEC’s headquarters in Malta
in 2006, by which time the centre had already made
good use of LIFE programme support through a number of different projects aimed at preventing and
reducing environmental impacts from maritime incidents in the Mediterranean region.
For example, in 1992, the national authorities from
Cyprus, Egypt and Israel asked REMPEC to help to
enhance their level of preparedness to face potential major marine pollution incidents. It implied the
establishment of a carefully designed mechanism
to generate mutual assistance between them, and
my former REMPEC colleagues, who have now retired, developed a dedicated capacity-building project
proposal.

This project - LIFE92 TCY/INT/007, coordinated by
REMPEC on behalf of the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) - focused on introducing a new sub-regional
system for combating major marine pollution incidents
affecting, or likely to affect, the territorial sea, coasts and
related interests of Cyprus, Egypt and Israel. As the centre did not have sufficient budget, nor enough personnel
to implement such a complex project, it applied to the
European Commission’s LIFE TCY mechanism for financial support (The European Union is a Party to the Barcelona Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment and the Coastal Region of the Mediterranean Sea).
LIFE funding was approved and REMPEC worked with the
three countries to implement project activities between
1993 and 1995. Another project entitled ‘Development
of spill response capabilities of Cyprus, Egypt and Israel’
(LIFE96 TCY/INT/08) was then also able to benefit from
LIFE funds. The latter was complementing the first subregional LIFE project and could be considered as a kind of
extension. [In 1999, this project was declared one of the
‘LIFE Success Stories’ by the DG Environment LIFE Unit].
Marine environment protection and management measures in Syria and Turkey were established by [later] LIFE
projects - LIFE98 TCY/TR/011; LIFE99 TCY/INT/017
- which helped to increase the level of preparedness of
both countries to face threats from accidental marine
pollution.
Such support from LIFE enabled the centre to significantly extend the scope of its activities to new areas and
gain new specialised skills on issues such as sensitivity
mapping.
Besides the financial support to four major projects,
which REMPEC conducted on behalf of the interested
Mediterranean coastal states, the LIFE programme also

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provided essential administrative support to the centre
throughout the project implementation periods. This support resulted in successful completion of these projects.
It also helped to build the centre’s capacity to manage
complex international, as well as national projects.
REMPEC’s experiences gained through the implementation of LIFE projects were crucial for constructively managing and implementing similar projects and activities
financed either from the centre’s regular budget or from
other external sources of financing.
The context of REMPEC’s activities is a complex one because capacity building in the field of accidental marine
pollution preparedness and response requires coordination of numerous national administrations, primarily
those responsible for environment and maritime affairs.
In addition, and very often, we also work with military
services, customs, foreign affairs, etc. Therefore one of
the challenges involved in ensuring the success of our
activities is to ensure the full support of the various national administrations, agencies, institutions and services.
One of the lessons learnt from the implementation of
the LIFE projects showed how REMPEC could overcome
potential problems by involving all institutions concerned
at a very early stage in the project’s lifecycle. We found
that this approach helps to safeguard the support of the
highest ranking officials and politicians. Political will to
successfully complete the capacity building projects always proves to be of paramount importance.

Sustainable experiences
We are pleased that we have been able to take on board
the experiences that REMPEC gained from working with
LIFE. For instance, the project methodologies which we
developed during the implementation of, in particular,

tri-lateral projects involving Cyprus, Egypt and Israel
were subsequently used by REMPEC in other parts of the
Mediterranean.
Similar projects have since been developed and implemented in Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, and in Croatia,
Italy and Slovenia. Moreover, procedures and some of
the outcomes of the national projects, such as the Syrian
project, were reproduced or replicated in the development
of national systems for preparedness and response to marine pollution in other Mediterranean coastal states.
It is clear that LIFE has assisted REMPEC, as well as the
Mediterranean countries that we serve, to navigate towards a higher level of awareness on and preparedness
for tackling threats affecting the marine environment and
economy. LIFE’s support made a big difference to the centre in helping it to reach out to more parts of the region as
well as facilitating its technical capacities in vital environmental protection fields.”
For more information on REMPEC’s projects, please
visit the online LIFE project database:
http://ec.europa.eu/environment/life/project/
Projects/index.cfm
Beneficiary: REMPEC
Contact: Frédéric Hébert
Email: rempec@rempec.org

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Building river restoration
communities through LIFE
Who???

One of the LIFE programme’s greatest achievements has been its role in capacity-building for nature conservation and environmental protection across the EU. Over the next three pages, two representatives of
the river restoration community give their personal perspectives on the value of LIFE.

Launching an ongoing European network
Bart Fokken is a retired civil servant from the Netherlands. He has been Chairman of the European Centre
for River Restoration (ECRR) since 2005, an organisation
that was launched in Silkeborg, Denmark in 1999 with
the aid of LIFE funding.
The ECRR has “come a long way from where we started
in the late 1990s,” believes Mr Fokken. “We have recently been asked to lead a team in the World Water
Forum 2012, developing know-how on river hydro-morphology and river restoration. When we started I never
imagined I would become Chairman of an important
pan-European network or that we would achieve so
much!”

Bart Fokken

The ECRR story really started back in the mid-1990s
with an initial LIFE river restoration project, ‘River Restoration: Benefits for Integrated Catchment Management’ (LIFE93 ENV/DK/002504). This worked on restoration of the Rivers Skerne and Cole in the UK and the

River Brede in Denmark and developed cooperation and
networking between bodies within and between those
countries.
Informal networks also existed between research departments. “I was involved because I worked at RIZA the Netherlands National Institute for Integrated Water
Management and Wastewater Treatment. We started to
talk about the possibility of creating a formalised European river restoration network,” Mr Fokken remembers.
Research was important – particularly when there was
so much still to learn. “But we wanted to go beyond
just researchers and bring in all the key practitioners on
river restoration including public and private bodies and
NGOs.”

Giving networking a kick start
The European Centre for River Restoration was launched
in 1999 with a LIFE project of the same name (LIFE99
ENV/DK/000619). The idea was to create a network to
exchange information and experiences on river restora-

tion. “We had a major five-day international conference
in Wageningen, Netherlands in 2000 with over 100 participants. We were able to promote our networking idea
and encourage people to both join and cooperate with
the ECRR,” recalls Mr Fokken.

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at one moment in time - rivers change naturally as well
as because of human interference. The important thing
is that the river dynamics are natural so that it can fulfil
its ecological functioning as it did in the past.” However,
says Mr Fokken, “The most important factor in successful
river restoration is always the human factor.”

Part of the ECCR concept was to foster national networks
and the LIFE project produced guidelines for this. By the
end of the project, there were national networks in the
UK, Denmark, Italy, Romania, Russia and Spain. “Today
we have 11 national centres and another four or five
informal networks,” says Mr Fokken with pride. “We have
over 500 members and direct contact with up to 2 000
people. We aim to cover the whole of Europe from the
Atlantic to the Urals and even external territories.
“The LIFE funding really helped us get started and now
we continue through the engagement of the members.
We take it in turns to run the secretariat from a different
country for around three years. In some ways the name is

“

a bit misleading, because
we don’t have a ‘centre’ –
we are very much a network of equals. However,
when we set it up, networking was not so well
recognised and you had
to be an ‘institution’ to be taken seriously.”

“

The LIFE funding was used to set the foundations for
the centre, including the creation of an ECRR website. By
the end of the project, ECCR had around 350 members,
including public bodies, research institutes, NGOs and individuals. It had also established good working contacts
with organisations such as the European Centre for Nature Conservation, WWF, IUCN and Ramsar.

ECCR partners are now involved in another LIFE project
(RESTORE - LIFE09 INF/UK/000032) which aims to
harmonise existing databases on river restoration to create a web-based tool informing users of best practices
in this field. The project hopes to meet the challenge of
establishing something that is useful both for countries
that already have developed databases and those that
are looking to create one for the first time.
“We have achieved so
much in Europe thanks to
the initial support from
LIFE, but I still have another ambition,” enthuses
Mr Fokken. “Our European
model had led to the creation of similar associations in Australia and Asia – between China, Korea and Japan – as well as contacts in
North America and the Middle East. I dream that one
day we will have a World Centre (or Network!) of River
Restoration.”

The most important factor
in successful river restoration is
always the human factor

Mutual benefits and future goals
Mr Fokken explains the method of working that the LIFE
project helped establish: “We hold two board meetings
a year and every meeting is one day of discussions and
one day making a study visit of river restoration projects.
It has been incredible the big differences that we have
seen in approaches to river restoration and how these
have changed over the years.
“When we started, river restoration usually meant physically restoring rivers to how they were in the past. Nowadays, we have learnt that you cannot try to freeze a river

For more information on ECRR’s projects, please visit the online LIFE project database: http://ec.europa.eu/environment/life/project/
Projects/index.cfm
Beneficiary: European Centre for River Restoration
Contact: Bart Fokken
Email: info@ecrr.org

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Waiting for the flood
Georg Frank fondly recalls the highlights of his time as a LIFE Nature project manager in Austria.

Georg Frank

was gone, the water level dropped
“I was employed by the Donau-Auen
THE PROJECT
down and when we returned, instead
National Park as project manager
The project implemented
of these big stones of the embankfor its second LIFE river restoralarge-scale restoration works
ment you have this big gravel bank.
tion project, ‘Donauufer – Restoraon a major European river.
So, within a few days the landscape
tion of Danube river banks’ (LIFE02
These greatly improved river
has changed totally, and instead of
NAT/A/008518). River restoration is
dynamics and the ecological
this artificial, hard embankment, you
always an investment for the future:
status of floodplains habitats
have a natural river bank.
you remove the embankment, you
and species.
see there is a lot of work going on,
The great thing is that the processes
but you don’t see the benefit. Then
are permanently going on, so after each flood, each low
the moment comes when you finalise the implementawater condition, the situation will change totally. You return
tion of the restoration, then you have to wait for the
after 10 years and it’s fascinating to see what is going
coming of the first flood. And that was definitely a very
on. That’s the good thing with our LIFE projects - they are
fascinating moment.
designed with a very long-term perspective, so nature is
doing the job of managing this dynamic river.
I remember it very well because it was a small flood and
we decided to go with the motor boat to the restoration
When my colleagues first proposed the idea of removing
site because we were not patient enough to wait till the
the embankment it was seen as a dream, as a vision that
next day for the water level to come down! We were there
was not so realistic, and then they planned it and it got
on the spot and you could feel - yes - that great things
more and more realistic, and then they applied for this LIFE
were going on. And then two or three days later the flood
project and [that] enabled them to bring this vision to reality, and what was illusion or a vision before the project was
completely realistic, completely normal after the project: it
was state-of-the-art of river restoration.
When you plan a LIFE project you have to bring together
a lot of ideas and stakeholders. This LIFE project was a
platform for water management, navigation and nature
conservation stakeholders. Without this platform, maybe

you would not work so intensively together. If you have
such a big project you are forced to cooperate, that creates
a trust and joint experiences which enable you to go on
with these cooperations. And that’s quite visible in our area.
We had one LIFE project dealing with river restoration, then
a follow-up project; the projects got more and more ambitious and as a follow-up from this, or a life-after-LIFE
result maybe, the water management company, the Wasserstrassendirektion implemented one of these river restoration projects, financed by funds from the Ministry for
Transport. It was nearly the same methodology and it was
the same vision and the same objective. So LIFE built the
platform, the cooperation was successful, each one of the
stakeholders was proud of the result and that motivates
you to go on with this process.
The LIFE project was for sure a milestone in my personal
career. The LIFE projects were also a milestone in the development of our national park and I think LIFE is also a
milestone for nature conservation in Austria. It is the tool
for large-scale nature conservation. For me LIFE is a synonym for ‘Large-scale Implementation of Nature Conservation – For Everyone’.”
Project number: LIFE02 NAT/A/008518
Title: Donauufer - Restoration of Danube river banks
Beneficiary: Nationalpark Donau-Auen GmbH
Contact: Georg Frank
Email: g.frank@donauauen.at

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Biomass boilers improve
village life in Slovakia

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Peter Dávidík, Anton Bríš and Ladislav Šimo

A pioneering LIFE project in Central Slovakia has helped replace old, unreliable and polluting heating systems
with a biomass-based alternative. We meet some of the villagers whose lives have been improved as a result.
Ľubochňa is a small village (1 100 inhabitants) in the
picturesque Veľká Fatra mountains in the Žilina region of
Central Slovakia. Founded in 1287, the village was once
a centre of wood and metal processing and, in the 19th
century, a popular holiday resort for the Austro-Hungarian aristocracy. Today, the main employer in Ľubochňa
is the National Institute for Endocrinology and Diabetes,
where some 200 people work and more than 30 000
patients a year receive treatment for their ailments. In
common with many villages in the region, Ľubochňa is
not connected to the gas mains and so relies on other
methods of heating in the often harsh winters. However,
as the Mayor, Peter Dávidík explains, prior to the installation of biomass boilers as part of the LIFE Environment
ILUBE project, keeping Ľubochňa warm came at a cost:
“the old heating systems burned coal and sludge and
they produced so much pollution.”

At the institute itself, where the boiler ran on heating oil, “the
old system was very complicated and not very efficient,” recalls the organisation’s Deputy Director, Ladislav Šimo.

They also tended to be somewhat unreliable. “It was very
cold in the kindergarten, in the primary school, in the municipal authority: children had to go to school wearing
lots of clothes,” remembers Anton Bríš, head of the investment department at the Endocrinology and Diabetes
institute.

“Biomass was totally new to us,” says Mr Bríš, but his organisation immediately saw the benefits: “The financial cost
was only 50% of the cost of using heating oil.” Equally importantly, patients also appreciated the results: “The climate
here is very cold and the institute has old buildings, but our
in-patients are very satisfied with the heat,” adds Mr Šimo.

Thanks to the intervention of BIOMASA, the beneficiary of
the LIFE ILUBE project, two new biomass boilers (each generating 0.7 MW) were installed in the basement of the endocrinology institute, providing heat for the seven buildings
of the institute and five other municipal buildings, including
the primary school and kindergarten.
The LIFE project also installed double-glazing in the schools
and local authority offices, and added insulation material to
retain heat. The work was done over three or four months,
between “heating seasons”, explains Mayor Dávidík. “The
reconstruction work wasn’t as difficult as the managing of
the project; making plans: all the bureaucracy.”

Pollution has also been noticeably reduced: “The air and environment are much clearer and have been improved radically,” observes Mr Dávidík. “The situation is at least twice as
good as before in terms of pollution and the smell of everything – it’s very good for the village and for the people.”
The villagers now see renewable energy sources as an important part of their future. “There is a lot of potential for
biomass because there are so many woods around Ľubochňa.
If you use it rationally there is a big opportunity to create new
job possibilities for the village,” believes Mr Dávidík.

Helping agriculture to innovate
José Fernando Robles works for ASAJA-Sevilla, the Young Farmers’ Agricultural Association of Seville, in
southern Spain.
José Fernando Robles

“I have always had links with the countryside and agriculture. I come from a family of farmers and a few years
ago I took over the running of the family farm. Nevertheless, farming has not always been my career. I started
out as a lawyer in Seville, specialising in European Union
law and the environment.

Today, I am active in the Young Farmers’ Agricultural Association of Seville and have recently been elected VicePresident of the European Council of Young Farmers. I
am therefore lucky enough to be in direct contact with
the latest developments in Europe. I see first-hand how
policies such as the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP)
or EU environment policy are continually evolving with
changing realities on the ground.

Photo: Audrey Thénard

Young Farmers and LIFE
More than 3 000 farmers have taken direct part in actions undertaken in the context of our projects over the
past 10 years. We learnt a lot from our first project
(Sustainable Doñana - LIFE00 ENV/E/000547) which
had the ambitious plan to establish demonstration plots
covering a wide variety of situations on the ground. This
took up so many of the project’s resources that we were
restricted in our dissemination work. In the second project (Sustainable Wetlands - LIFE04 ENV/ES/000269),
we had a better adaptation of the tasks to the resources
available and were able to carry out an awareness campaign that reached thousands of farmers and ensured a
multiplier effect. What both our LIFE projects had in common was the aim to introduce innovative techniques for
the efficient and effective management of agricultural
land within protected areas. Since 2010, we have also
participated as a partner of another LIFE Nature project:

Humedales andaluces (LIFE03 NAT/E/000055). This
project is aiming to develop strategies to benefit both
farmers and biodiversity.
Some of the challenges we faced were also quite surprising. I remember that during the first project, we were
trying to convince farmers to leave a vegetative cover in
their olive groves. We were able to explain the ecological benefits, notably to the soil. However, many farmers
came back to us explaining that they couldn’t do what
we were asking because their neighbours would think
they had abandoned their grove!
We chose LIFE funding because we wanted to address
problems that we shared with other European countries.

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The best aspect of the LIFE programme is that it has such
a wide scope it offers possibilities to fund the demonstration of a whole range of good environmental ideas that
different types of organisations may have. It is the reference programme for environmental funding for private
organisations like ours.

Another ongoing benefit of the LIFE projects has been
the informal networks that we were able to create with
different farmland stakeholders. Many of the farmers
that took part continue to share their experiences and
talk about any new problems they are facing. This provides the inspiration for even more new initiatives.

I think that our projects have been successful because
we have direct knowledge and understanding of farmers’
needs on the ground. This has enabled a bottom-up approach to project design, which has in turn assured a high
level of participation. We have also had a very clear focus
on developing innovative strategies that benefit the farmers as well as benefitting the environment. This makes it
much easier to work together to find solutions.

Personal rewards

Many farmers who have participated in our projects probably would not otherwise have introduced the changes
that the LIFE funding made possible. The programme really helped the introduction and development of processes that are well adapted to the reality on the ground and
therefore provide genuine solutions for farmers.
LIFE projects want to demonstrate measurable successes
to justify their funding. Yet our projects achieved many
things that it is hard to measure. It’s not easy to assess
the value of a tonne of soil that does not erode away or
an increase in the rabbit population that provides food for
endangered species. Yet these benefits are very real.
The most satisfying and important achievement of
all was changing the mentality of so many farmers that took part in the project and getting them
to see, for example, that the weeds and other
plants that compete with their crops can be
managed effectively to be an essential element in protecting their basic resource –
their soil.

LIFE gave me the opportunity to work in the development of new strategies and their direct application in the
field. I think there is often a gap between farmers’ everyday concerns and discussion and decisions that take
place in Brussels. LIFE provides a means of translating
‘Community theory’ into something understandable and
useful at local or regional level. I therefore believe that
LIFE is an essential instrument for the development of
EU environment policy. Particularly in the current situation of economic crisis, it is more important than ever to
invest in ‘green development’ and to show the innovative
solutions that are possible to meet economic and environmental needs.

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LIFE provides a means of
translating ‘Community theory’ into
something understandable and
useful at local or regional level

LIFE also gave me the incredibly enriching experience of meeting and getting to know many people
and professionals from
across Europe who are
working in similar fields.
I not only developed a better understanding of the
complexity of European environmental issues, but also
made friends and acquaintances that I still have today.”

3 MEET THE CITIZENS
Protecting our planet starts with the individual. Here we meet a selection of European citizens â&#x20AC;&#x201C; including, amongst others, schoolchildren in
Bulgaria, a volunteer viper conservationist in Hungary and a firefighter
in the UK â&#x20AC;&#x201C; who have been inspired and motivated to make a difference
by their involvement in LIFE Nature and Environment projects.

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LIFE involves residents in initiatives
to meet Kyoto obligations
LIFE ROMAPERKYOTO project to encourage local initiatives to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
“I used to manage a video shop in the area of Casal Palocco (a residential area of Rome) and it was right there that
the idea of the Palocco per Kyoto association was born.
One of my customers wrote an article for our local newspaper in which he explored the idea of transforming our
area into one that would use solar energy. I found this idea
very interesting and thought: instead of just talking or writing about it, why don’t we try to do it?
I already had some knowledge and interest in environmental issues. So, together with a handful of friends we decided to host a first meeting meeting in the local hall. We
expected about 60 people, but over 500 turned up!

Humble beginnings
That first meeting was a little naïve: I recall that the microphone was actually a small karaoke machine we had borrowed from an 8 year-old girl! Following the expressions of
interest, the association was officially launched in May 2007.
We didn’t have an office. At first it was my video shop, but
later I sold-up in order to put all my energy into the association. We are non profit-making, with the aim of informing local people about greener energy options and ways of
implementing and financing them.

Around this time I heard about the LIFE RomaperKyoto
We had also invited some technical and financial people to
project. The project manager, Claudio Baffioni, invited me
come and speak to us about
to participate in the round
renewable energy and to
table discussions towards
THE PROJECT
explain how we should go
the voluntary agreement
about installing solar panamong stakeholders. I parThe ROMAPERKYOTO project developed an integrated planning process for the reduction of greenhouse
els. Thankfully, they were
ticipated in the meetings
gas (GHG) emissions in Rome. Following a number
willing to give up their free
to try to bring the focus on
of pilot actions, a local action plan was developed
time and help us as, lookthe residential sector and to
to reduce emissions by 6.5%, in line with the Kyoto
ing back, I realise we didn’t
emphasise how important
targets for Italy, and setting an example for other
really know anything about
it is to involve citizens and
municipalities across Europe.
the issues involved.
small communities.

Denise Lancia

I think that participating in the LIFE project has positively influenced our own initiative. It put us in contact with
people working in the sector with the institutions that are
working towards the same objectives.
I believe that projects such as this can be of immense value. At these round tables I found myself working alongside
people from the institutions and managers from the petroleum industry. This is very important in helping to bring the
citizens closer to local administration and also to industry.
Moreover, thanks to our participation in the project, our
objectives were included in the City of Rome’s environmental action plan (72/2009) towards meeting the Kyoto climate and energy targets.”

Thirty-nine year-old Ákos Baracsy is an engaging man
with several interesting hobbies (playing the synthesizer,
model trains, photography), and one very unusual one:
snake conservation. A native of Budapest, Ákos attributes the start of his long interest in reptiles and amphibians to a chance encounter at the age of five:
“I found a common toad in my grandmother’s
garden. It was bigger than my palm and it
looked exciting. We closed him up in a
jar and I looked at him for hours,” he
recalls fondly.
This initial encounter led to a
passion for photographing
amphibians and reptiles,
which in turn led to an
encounter with LIFE.
“I had a project to
find and take photos
of all amphibian
and reptile taxons
(both species and
subspecies) living
in Hungary. Since
Vipera ursinii rakosiensis is extremely
hard to find and
dwells exclusively on

strictly protected, and thus prohibited, fields I was happy
to have found this project that dealt with the species,” he
recalls. As a result he went along to a field event organised by MME-BirdLife Hungary and it was there – sometime in 2003 – that Ákos met the LIFE project manager,
Bálint Halpern, who invited him to more events. “Since
then it has become a regular part of my life.”
Ákos’s main work as a project volunteer involves writing a viper inventory computer programme (IT is also his
profession). “We have quite a lot of snakes and it is not
always easy to find them - to know where they are, their
previous history. Sometimes we try to confine them to specific terraria but they can change their mind and change
their terrarium as well! It is easier to find them if you have
a database.” The identification programme has two distinct
functions: the first helps to identify the snakes according
to the number of specific scales; the second helps to construct an ‘ID card’ for each snake. “For this you need photographs of the left face, the right face and the top of the
head.,” explains Ákos helpfully.
He also helps to measure the snakes at the viper centre
that was set up as part of the first LIFE project. “The meadow viper is certainly not a big species – it doesn’t usually
grow beyond 65 cm - and usually the ones we see are
newborn or one or two years old and they rarely exceed 30
cm,” points out Ákos. “Sometimes we have to measure the

bigger ones, which is exciting and in captivity they really
grow fast. Sometimes I have the impression that they actually like to be there: they get food. Sometimes I can feel,
oh, this thing is quite fat. It likes it here,” he says smiling.
“It is also interesting how different the character of each
individual can be,” he adds. “Coming from the same terraria or an hour later from the same sack or bucket,
with the same size and perhaps the same familial background, one seems to be bored with the measurements,
while I can hardly separate the other one’s fangs from
my glove! Another interesting thing is the smell. In my
opinion they smell like green peas, which I do not find
unpleasant at all! Bálint always laughs when I say this.”

Field trips are a particular highlight of volunteering, says
Ákos. “I like roaming in the fields, you cannot believe how
different it can be from week to week, at all times of the
year.”
Field work can involve anything from examining known
and suspected viper habitats to monitoring free-roaming vipers and helping to
monitor insects and small
rodent holes, also important research underpinning the viper conservation actions. “It feels good
to contribute to scientific
programmes,” says Ákos. “I have learned a lot of biology.”

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Ákos says that “one of the best things about being a
volunteer is it’s fun. You can do it when you have free
time, when you feel like it; it’s not like a job.” A field trip
is usually a “50:50” mix of “old faces” and “new volunteers; sometimes students who are writing a thesis.
It’s good meeting people with the same interest,” he
believes. “To anyone else thinking of becoming a volunteer I say do not hesitate: it is worth every minute you
spend here.”

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As well as “good company”, another benefit of being
a volunteer is “seeing and making regular trips to the
Hungarian lowlands, which were previously not only
nearly unknown to me, but are as good as unreachable with public transport.” The lowlands, says Ákos,
are “nothing special” at first sight, “but once you get
deep inside on a field trip you start enjoying what it
is like. In the lowlands they say that if something is
3-5 m high then it’s a hill, if it’s over 5 m then it’s a
mountain!”

To anyone else thinking of
becoming a volunteer I say do not
hesitate: it is worth every minute

He has also learned some good tips about wildlife photography, although, as he recalls, one field trip was
rather more eventful than planned: “I love to spot lizards and I like to photograph them. Once I found a very
attractive-looking lizard and I wanted to photograph it.
I lay down and took pictures for five to 10 minutes and
then Balint said ‘freeze. Don’t move. There is a snake
just next to you’. And it was there all the time and we
didn’t notice it even though we were there for 10 minutes! [Meadow vipers] are very secretive.”

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For Ákos, LIFE projects
can have an important
role to play in improving
public awareness of and
involvement in nature
conservation. “The key is education, which is done well
within [the LIFE-backed meadow viper conservation]
programme. Children who have spent a pleasant day
at the centre will have positive memories about nature. Those who have seen the snakes and the people
handling them will see that these animals are not at
all evil and certainly not dangerous. By introducing
children who have probably only lived in urban environments to wildlife it will forever plant the love of
nature in them.”
The love of nature is certainly strong in Ákos Baracsy: “We have to mend what we have ruined. It is our
responsibility. Nature keeps us alive, not the banking
system or industries.” With that, our interview comes
to a close. As we shake hands and head off into the
Budapest night, he says “it’s funny, I mentioned that I
wanted to take photographs of every species of reptile
that lives in Hungary. There are very common species
that I have never seen or photographed and then there
is this meadow viper which is the rarest reptile in Europe and my hard drive is full of photos of it!”

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LIFE in the field

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H ungarian meadow viper projects
LIFE began supporting the viper conservation work of MME-BirdLIfe Hungary in
2004, with € 324 500 of co-funding for the HUNVIPURS project (LIFE04 NAT/
HU/000116). This LIFE Nature “Best of the Best” project laid the groundwork
for saving the species from extinction, including taking all of the small number
of sites where the species was found into state ownership and establishing
the Hungarian Meadow Viper Conservation Centre, where captive breeding of
the Hungarian meadow viper takes place. Further funding for this crucial conservation work came from LIFE+. The ongoing CONVIPURSRAK project (LIFE07
NAT/H/000322) has received some € 1.67 million for grassland habitat reconstruction work and continuation and expansion of captive breeding prior to a
reintroduction into the wild.
Contact: Bálint Halpern. Email: balint.halpern@mme.hu

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Art for LIFE’s sake
Artists Christina Diana Wenderoth and Alois Steger were invited by the Technical University of Munich
(Weihenstephan campus) to participate in the LIFE FLOODSCAN project by producing works for the Fluss
Werke Land Art Park. The park, which is located in the Isar river floodplains in Moosburg, has been designed
not only to have an aesthetic appeal, but also to make people think about the possibility of flooding occurring, an important and innovative dissemination tool for a project dedicated to flood risk management.
Alois Steger

Alois Steger

because the atmospheric conditions change constantly. They complicate and enrich the work.

“This project followed a previous collaboration with the
climate workshop of the Technical University of Munich:
I took part in an art project, ‘Labyrinth - Climate Change’.
I then received a call from Maria Hagemeier-Klose of the
Department of Forest and Environmental Policy at the
university about this new project, and we arranged a
meeting at Chiemsee to get to know one another and
establish an approach and rough schedule.
The aim of this project was to generate interest in
art, raise awareness, develop ideas, promote dialogue
and strengthen cooperation. My hope was that the
students would seek my suggestions and I could help
them develop their ideas.

“

“

Art offers new images to aid
understanding and highlight the
vulnerability of nature

For me personally it is always interesting to explore
new landscapes and natural areas, and to respond
artistically. Working in nature is a constant challenge

I grew up in a small mountain village in Tyrol (Austria), and from an early age I was deeply rooted in nature, and the understanding of nature plays a central
role in my work. The art works are in constant flux as
the forest changes.
Art offers new images to aid understanding and highlight the vulnerability of nature. A changed perception
of the natural and supernatural reality can arise if we
encounter nature and its forces in a mindful and meditative way. The artistic component provides the necessary
motivation to express the good in one’s soul.
Since the implementation of this project, new job opportunities in other areas have opened up. My career
has changed. I am invited more often to go to places
to carry out land art projects. By addressing nature,
I gain inner strength for new ideas. How the land art
park in Moosburg will evolve is uncertain, but I am
available for future artistic initiatives.”

Christina Diana Wenderoth
“A student had found me on the Internet (www.naturkunstundspiel.de). Because there are many female students
at the university they wanted to have a woman on the
team alongside Alois Steger.
This project was very interesting because it was a big
project and a team project. The aim was to create an
arts trail that would last for a long time. My normal
way of working is to produce ephemeral works, so it
was a great challenge to create something that would
be permanent. I work exclusively with natural materials
and rarely use foreign materials and tools, so that was
another challenge.

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For me personally, it was easiest to address the realities
of nature directly and capture them. So often works are
impermanent and are soon gone with the breeze. But a
different focus was needed for the land art park.
It was a very valuable experience for me to participate in
this major project, and it was very exciting to work in a
team with academics, other artists and students. Nature
conservation has always been very important to me even
before the project.
Land art is an especially wonderful opportunity to reconnect people with nature and with themselves. Through this
intensive contact, from my experience, you gain a new appreciation of nature that may lead to a raised level of environmental awareness and subsequent action.

Christina Diana Wenderoth

Land art is used extensively in Germany as a tool for
environmental education and in teaching the importance
of sustainable development. I have incorporated these
ideas in the art classes that I give. While I don’t know
about the future of the land art park, I would be willing
to participate again, should the opportunity come up.”

A special week for waste reduction
Mireia Padrós works for the Catalan Waste Agency (ARC) in Barcelona, Spain, one of the partner organisations involved in the LIFE-backed European Week for Waste Reduction.
“The European Week for Waste Reduction has been really inspiring. It is really making a difference in showing people what can be achieved by thinking more
about waste reduction. At a personal level it has also
changed the attitudes that my family and I have to
the waste we produce at home.

Mireia Padrós

My background is in biology and environmental engineering. Previously I worked at the Regional Office for
Latin American and Caribbean Countries of UNEP as a
fundraiser for environmental projects. This gave me
the chance to work on some interesting international
projects. In Mexico I worked to raise judges’ understanding and awareness of environmental laws and
their implementation; I also worked there trying to
find financial support for markets selling eco-design
products.
I came to the ARC specifically to work on the European
Week for Waste Reduction. It has opened my eyes to all

THE PROJECT
The LIFE EWWR project established the European
Week for Waste Reduction, a major initiative to
promote waste reduction actions and awareness
across Europe.

the good ideas and actions that are out there for reducing waste. The initial idea for the European Week came
from France, where they organised a first edition in the
north of the country, followed the next year by a nationwide week.

Launch of the European Week
The French National Agency for the Environment and
Energy Management (ADEME) successfully applied for
LIFE funding to launch the European Week for Waste
Reduction (LIFE07 INF/F/000185). ARC is one of four
partner organisations involved in the project (along
with ACR+, LIPOR and IBGE). In the pilot edition of the
week (2008), we had about 30 different actors organising around 100 different waste reduction actions. A
big part of my role has been to go out and encourage
people to take part. There is no funding for their activities, so I have to convince them that it is also in their
own best interests to do something.
It is relatively easy to go into a school or local municipality and get them to take action – they are usually
open to the idea. However, a bigger challenge can be
to convince businesses to do something special for the
week since they sometimes want an immediate return
on any activities. We can offer them excellent dissemination of their efforts and I try to show them that re-

ducing waste is not just good for the environment and
their public image, but can also help them cut costs.
By 2011, we had more than 500 activities taking place.
I have seen some really great ideas here in Catalonia.
My favourite was probably a project that saw designers
turning old clothes into totally new designs. It was amazing to see the fantastic new clothes that they were able
to create from clothes that nobody wanted any more. I
saw a similar activity with furniture. Sometimes people’s

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creativity can create new solutions for waste that you
might never think possible.

individual project. We have also chosen 10 activities in the
region to film so that we can highlight their efforts through
audio-visual media.

Rewarding good ideas
A key aspect of what the European Week does is raise
awareness of the activities that people are carrying out.
This is both to reward people who have implemented good
ideas, but also to inspire people who might not know what
is possible or where to start to reduce their waste. Focused
dissemination such as this is so important in enabling people to learn from one another.
People should be reducing their waste all year round, but
the European Week provides a special opportunity to give
more profile to a particular action or event. This could be
anything from establishing a
market for unwanted goods,
a company paper-free day or
a food-waste-reduction challenge in a school.

“

We select what we consider to be the best, most interesting or innovative activities and nominate them for the
European Awards that have been given annually since
2010 by an independent international jury. There are different prizes for each of five categories of project developer: public authority; association/NGO; private business;
educational establishment; and ‘other’, which could be
anything from a hospital to a cultural centre.
The Awards ceremony is a great occasion. For the first
two years, it has been held in
Brussels in March. In 2012, it
will be in Paris (19 June). It is
usually combined with a conference so that people working
on waste reduction issues can
come together to share experiences and ideas. I have been
each year and it is so motivating to meet people from across
Europe who are coming up with new ideas and solutions
on waste reduction all the time.

It is so motivating to meet
people from across Europe who
are coming up with new ideas
and solutions on waste
reduction all the time

“

We do a lot of press communication in Catalonia and
try to highlight all the actions
that register to take part in
the European Week. We want to show people that every action is important, from the largest company to the smallest

In the two years of the awards we have had three European prize winners from Catalonia: the clothes redesign
project; a broad waste prevention campaign in Barcelona;
and a project to reduce glass packaging in the cava sector.
It is always exciting to see whether a project from my region can win a European prize. We can really use it to highlight their success and motivate other people in Catalonia.
The current LIFE project closes soon and we have applied
for more funding to develop the Week even further. We
want to look at and promote the three Rs of: reduction; reuse; and recycling to achieve the primary goal of waste reduction. Everyone has been so inspired so far that hopefully
we will find a way to make it happen and continue the development and impact of this inspirational European Week.”

I love working with these kinds of projects. They are concrete actions, which can make a big difference locally
and internationally. You cannot help but think differently
about your own waste production. When I have clothes
that I don’t want anymore, I think about taking them to
an exchange market or giving them to someone who can
make use of them. Even my two daughters always think
about whether they can make use of something again
before they throw it away.

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A Finnish household embraces
LIFE waste prevention
Mirva Merimaa and her husband Antti Kuivalainen live in Helsinki in Finland. They played an active part in
the LIFE WASTEPrevKit waste prevention project.
Mirva Merimaa and Antti Kuivalainen live in Vikki Latokartano, a residential area of Helsinki of some 6 000 inhabitants. They’ve always participated in voluntary groups,
especially those dealing with environmental issues. They
readily agreed to participate in the LIFE WASTEPrevKit project, as one of 14 families who would put into practice the
guidelines developed by the project beneficiary, Helsinki
Region Environmental Services Authority (HSY).

THE PROJECT
Led by the beneficiary, the LIFE WASTEPrevKit
project developed and disseminated a wide
range of waste prevention tools that were
implemented by schools, households, public
administrations and enterprises with the
overall goal of reducing waste in four Finnish
municipalities.

Ms Merimaa had always considered that she was conducting her life in an environmentally friendly way. However,
when she started receiving information from the beneficiary
on how to reuse and prevent
waste, she says she realised
how much more could be done
– not just by her own family, but
also within the community. For
example, at that time she was
also involved in the organisation
of a music event that involved a
large number of pregnant women and toddlers: “I helped in pro-

viding everyone with information on using washable nappies, instead of the disposable ones. I also tried to make
the idea sound more attractive, as disposable nappies are
very polluting and expensive, whereas the washable and
reusable one are environmentally friendly and cheaper.”

I go to somebody’s house and I see that they are wasting
food, or throwing away a lot, I tell them some of the ‘tricks’
that we have learnt on waste prevention,” she says. She
adds that some of their friends have also started doing the
same things, following discussions they’ve had together.

Meanwhile, for her own family, an expert from HSY came
to explain the methods that they should adopt for a year:
“We weighed the bags of waste (organic, plastic, paper)
and kept a diary. At the end of the period, we had reduced the amount by 33%,” she says.

Says Mr Kuivalainen: “It was also very surprising to see
how little organic waste we could produce.” However, he
adds that eliminating packaging waste is more difficult,
as there is not enough choice in shops and supermarkets.

Changing mind-set
At first, it was quite a struggle to follow the advice to
‘waste less food’. “We had to change the way we thought
and bought,” she says. For example, the family bought
less, asking themselves if they were really were going
to eat all the food. They also bought products in bigger
containers in order to reduce waste packaging, or better
quality products that would last longer.
In the beginning, she says, the family found that this “new
way of thinking” took up a lot of their time, but eventually
it started to become a routine way of life: “Now whenever

Finally, the family considers that LIFE projects of this
type are important as they are able to reach the general
public and are helping to influence the way people live
and behave. They say as a result of the project they’ve
really changed their ways and are far more informed
about waste issues in general.
Project number: LIFE05 ENV/FIN/000539
Title: WASTEPrevKit - Waste Prevention Kit for enterprises, education and households
Beneficiary: Helsinki Region Environmental Services Authority (HSY)
Contact: Riitta-Liisa Hahtala
Email: riitta-liisa.hahtala@hsy.fi

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Turning rivers into a classroom
Mrs Rona Dixon is a teacher at Holbeach Primary School in Catford, London, UK. Her school participated in the
LIFE QUERCUS project.
ing after, but which was padlocked up and unusable for
many years.

Opening up access to a local river

We could not get too involved with the children when it
was being re-routed - it was a lot of work with heavy
machinery. However, we built it up so that a variety of

There is a park next to the school called Ladywell Fields
and, although people always knew there was a river
there, it was not ever something you thought about using with the children. There was a lot of ground cover, so
you could not actually see it very well; it was behind iron
gates and you could not access it very easily. It was not
a safe area to take a class of children and a lot of litter
had built up in and around the river.
The father of one of the pupils was involved in developing the LIFE project, QUERCUS. He asked if we would like
to get involved and we did! We already had a connection
with the park in two areas. There is an old ticket office
for the train station on the edge of the park and it was
transformed into a classroom, which was available to
schools in the area to use for lessons. We also had an
area that the school was officially responsible for look-

The project totally re-routed the river. It took about a
year to change the channel so that it now comes right
through the middle of Ladywell Fields and is no longer
hidden behind iron gates. They also put in a lot of bridges
and meanders so that people could walk across and see
more wildlife and have easier access to the river.

classes in the school went to the ticket office classroom
and worked with the QUERCUS project school liaison
officer. They took part in fieldwork, saw the re-routing
work being done and learnt about the river and its surroundings.

Rona Dixon

The children played an important role clearing rubbish
from the area. One of the most exciting aspects of the
project was seeing the children in the water cleaning it up
– many of the children had never been in a river before.
When the project was up and running, we worked with
QUERCUS to open up the area of park that we were re-

THE PROJECT
The QUERCUS project was a partnership between
the London Borough of Lewisham, Chester City
Council in NW England and ‘s-Hertogenbosch in
the Netherlands. The project’s actions have enhanced river corridors in each of the three cities,
turning problem areas into an attractive feature
of an urban environment.

MEET THE CITIZENS

“I knew when I was 10 years old that I wanted to be
a teacher and I’ve been teaching at Holbeach Primary
School for about 13 years. In the past, environmental issues would not have been talked about with the children.
Today they are not only talked about, but we work practically with the children to achieve goals such as reducing
our carbon footprint and minimising waste. Sustainability is now part of the curriculum and is integrated into
literacy and topic lessons.

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sponsible for. The school council (made up of two representatives from each class, who hold that position for
one year and represent their class in meetings which influence decision-making affecting the school) was asked
how they would like to use it. The children decided to create an outdoor classroom, with logs to sit on. The project
also helped dig a pit and the school paid for a pond lining
to be installed as we discovered that toads have a route
from that area down to the river. The project gave a new
impetus to use that area.
Before the project, the park often felt dangerous to walk
through and it was not a area where you would really want to relax. Now [it] is used by the community much more and the atmosphere
has changed dramatically. There are
far more people around and the
lighting seems much better so
you feel much safer.
The
children
have
helped, because once
they have gone there
with staff, afterwards
they tell their families and take them
there and point
things out to them.
It has taken a few
years for the shrubs
and planting around
the river to fully develop, but now the
river is totally integrated into the park. A
cafe, which was closed
for many years, has reo-

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pened close to the river and it is an area where people
want to meet. Near the cafe is a very shallow area of
the river and a small under-fives play area has been installed alongside.

New learning opportunities

The LIFE project dramatically changed the school’s use
of open spaces for teaching. It has made learning more
meaningful to the children. In the past, when we studied
rivers we organised a trip to see the river Darent in Horton Kirby. We had to hire a coach - our time at the river
was short and it was an expensive day.

By making the local river Ravensbourne accessible, it
has made local learning in and outside of the classroom
more exciting. Now we have safe access to an area
where we can lean about the scientific and geographical aspects you associate with rivers. We can measure
the width of the river in different places, the speed that
something moves down the river and so on.
The work that we do on habitats, animals and plants
and everything that lives in and around a river has now
become something we can do from close observation,
including samples, rather than just from a book or the
Internet. Even things like the water cycle, which we always used to teach in the classroom, can now be taught
by the river with practical reference to parts of the cycle.
We have even started investigating other aspects of the
river, such as tracing it back upstream to its confluence
with the River Pool and taking walks up there as well.
That is purely based on the access that is now available.
The children’s direct engagement with the river has
started lots of interesting discussions about issues such
as the river’s biodiversity and how the rubbish got into

The LIFE project dramatically
changed the school’s use of open
spaces for teaching. It has
made learning more
meaningful to the children

“

46

the river. It helps the children extend their thinking
about what is right and wrong: you question more and
analyse better when you can interact with the space
rather than from a book or the Internet.
The children have continued to be involved in decision-making about the river. [They] are still active
in cleaning activities and also worked on an exciting
project to restock the river with fish.

We think and hope the local community will continue
to protect the area and the school will continue to
contribute through cleaning activities with the children. The major work has been done to improve the
river and hopefully now it will sustain itself. Local
people are definitely more aware of the changes in
Ladywell Fields and some of the primary schoolchildren involved in the project are already in the secondary schools and hopefully retaining their positive
connection with the space.”

Children’s friend Boo
Keis, Maria and Vladi are 8-9 year-old children from Sofia, Bulgaria.
The Eco-Animation project (LIFE07 INF/UK/000950)
used LIFE funding to create ‘My Friend Boo’ (www.
myfriendboo.com) – a series of animated stories designed to educate, entertain and inform European children about water consumption, pollution and waste.
The project understood that creating sustainable
long-term solutions to our environmental challenges
requires engaging and educating our young people
about what all of us can do to make a contribution.
We asked Keis Todorov (aged 8), Maria Dimitrova (9)
and Vladimir Angelov (8) – who attend the 120th Primary School, Georgi St. Rakovski, Sofia – to watch the
videos and give us their reactions to the stories and
the messages they contain. They watched the cartoons for the first time and gave their views afterwards to teachers at the children’s centre Art Land in
Sofia, January 2012.
All three children said they enjoyed watching My
Friend Boo, with Maria in particular saying she enjoyed

THE PROJECT
The Eco-Animation project created a cartoon series and teaching materials to explain key issues
around water consumption, pollution and waste
to young children. The ‘My Friend Boo’ videos
have been made available and broadcast in many
languages across Europe.

Keis Todorov, Maria Dimitrova, Vladimir Angelov

consider a real life issue around water use and turn to
Boo for help. Boo is a magical teddy bear who lives in
the attic. When the children turn a magic key in his back,
Boo comes to life. With his catchphrase “All aboard!” he
then invites the children to ride a magical carousel on
a journey of discovery that will answer their questions.

it “very much”. The My Friend Boo stories use key sequences that repeat in each programme so that there
are parts the children recognise and look forward to,
in amongst the new messages. The success of this
approach was demonstrated during the project development through testing the cartoons on children aged
5-8 in five EU countries: Italy, Ireland, Belgium, Poland
and Bulgaria.

Children enjoy Boo’s adventures

My Friend Boo captures children’s attention and imagination through the use of situations the children can understand, magic and humour. In each story, the children

The children watched the three episodes on water and
took on board messages from each. Each child had their
favourite. Both Vladimir and Keis liked the episode “The

MEET THE CITIZENS

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Big Picture” best. In this story,
Boo turns his magic carousel into a kind of boat which
takes the children along a
river to see how farming and
industrial activities threaten
river-based ecosystems. Maria explained its core message succinctly: “Water is
important and everything
depends on people. Where we
are polluting the water, we
need to make filters”.
The characters in the story
learn how everyone’s actions
impact on water supplies and
how we all need to work together to protect them. The
story helps children understand that, as Vladi puts it, “it
is very important to keep water clean. If we pollute water,
the rivers, seas, lakes, plants
and birds will die.” They see
that creating a wetland could
filter the water and create a
home for wildlife.
Maria’s favourite story was “Victoria’s Wetlands” in
which Boo takes the children on a magical journey to
meet Victoria, a line-dancing water vole! Victoria is sad
and lonely because pollution from a paint factory has
driven all the other plants and animals away. The children find the guilty factory and help its owner install a
filter and create a wetland to clean the water before it
enters the river. Boo helps the children understand that
pouring paint down the sink at home also causes pollu-

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tion. Maria is convinced. “I
won’t throw paint into the
sink!”

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It is very important to keep
water clean. If we pollute water,
the rivers, seas, lakes, plants
and birds will die

In the episode “It’s Only
Water” the children leave
a tap running, so Boo
takes them to another planet where they see that wasting water by leaving taps on, dripping taps and overwatering of gardens can lower water levels in rivers and
lakes. As Vladi understood, “Boo says that we needed
to save water because the rivers will become dry.” Keis
remembered the key message that “If you leave the tap
on, there won’t be enough water.”

Children understand Boo’s messages
My Friend Boo succeeds in getting important environmental messages over to children in a fun and entertaining way. The children particularly remembered
avoiding wasting water as something tangible that
they can do in their own lives. “We need to make big
efforts to save the water resources,” highlighted Keis
after seeing the cartoons. “I want to do some of the
things [Boo says].” Vladi also said, “I remember that I
need to save water.”
Boo explained that such waste can cause water shortages in dry seasons and is also a threat to habitats and
the species that depend on them. Maria picked up on
the message that “we need to save water, because this
would be better for the natural environment.” Vladi understood that everyone needs to be careful with water
“because we keep the world for the others around us”.
The children have clearly retained the key message at
the end of each story that reducing consumption, pollution and waste of water “means a better world for
you and me, and all the plants and animals!”

Boo and the other characters also give some practical ideas for saving water,
including more efficient
showerheads and toilet
flushes – much to the
amusement of the child
characters! Boo explained and Vladi remembered that
“we should water the plants with rain water” to protect
the valuable clean supplies in our taps.
The interviews with the children highlight that children not
only take on board Boo’s messages for themselves, but
are keen to take the messages back into their homes to
change their family’s habits – a key added-value of educating children. Maria was clear that, “I will tell my mother
[about the things Boo said]”. Vladi and Keis also said that
they would tell their families what they had learned.
Finally, having understood “The Big Picture” from the
Boo stories, Maria was excited to hear that the videos
were also being shown to children across Europe and are
available in more than 15 languages: “Great! Now they
will also know to save water!” Whilst Vladi had his own
particular contribution that he wanted to make to saving
water, which his parents might not be so pleased about:
“Yes, I won’t wash my hands for so long!”

LIFE builds relationships
to tackle heath fires
The LIFE Nature Dorset Heaths project in southern England is “the most fulfilling thing I’ve been involved

Tim Spring is the Service Delivery Manager for Bournemouth, Poole and Christchurch for Dorset Fire and Rescue Service. “I’m responsible for all of the front-facing
outcomes of our service, whether it’s prevention, protection or actual response.” he explains. Bournemouth,
Poole and Christchurch is “a conurbation of around about
a third of a million people - it fluctuates as a tourist destination - and we’ve currently got seven fire stations in
the conurbation, with 10 front line pumping appliances,
plus Land Rovers, that kind of thing.”
Mr Spring has been with the Dorset Fire and Rescue Service for 10 years, joining around the time that the Urban
Heaths Partnership began the LIFE Dorset Heaths
project (July 2001-June 2005).
Heath fires were a particular problem in the
area covered by Redhill Park Fire Station
in Bournemouth where Mr Spring was
station commander for six-and-a-half
years: “232 in 2002, I think, when I took
over. With 200 heath fires, 200 car
fires a year there was a clear focus
that needed to be put on prevention.”

Education was an important part of that focus. “I’m a
fire investigation officer and heathland fires are probably
the most challenging in terms of proving what went on,”
says Mr Spring. “But if you just look coincidentally at the
school opening hours and the school holiday times, the
vast majority were arson.”
Heath fires are not just a nuisance; they can also be
deadly. “I’m not a scientist, but what I have been is

caught out a couple of times by heath fires,” recalls Mr
Spring. “The amount of radiated heat which can be generated by the vegetation, particularly the gorse is really,
really scary. The last firefighter in Dorset to die in flame
was putting out a heathland fire on the Overcliff down
by the seafront. They are incredibly dangerous, they’re
incredibly fast-moving; they are very, very difficult to
manage.”
To get across the fire prevention message, Mr Spring
built on fledgling partnership work established by Steve Shuck, Dorset Fire and Rescue’s area manager for
Poole, and the LIFE project beneficiary, Urban Heaths
Partnership (UHP). In terms of education, Mr Spring
says modestly, “all I did was piggyback on the
work that Tess [Cross – LIFE project education officer] and Heather [Tidball – LIFE
project manager] were doing. Tess had
written some really good presentations - we went and did joint deliveries with them. Tess had been
employed as a teacher, so had a
brilliant way of engaging with the
young people, but to support that

MEET THE CITIZENS

Tim Spring

in in 25 years in the fire service”, says firefighter Tim Spring.

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by having a fire engine and fire fighters there it just really
made the kids engage,” recalls Mr Spring. “It just worked
really well: we gave her credibility; she gave us the ability, if you like.”

partnership: “It was the first time I’d ever actually seen
a 30-way domestic (dispute)! Everyone had a different view and everyone felt very passionately about the
heathland.”

Engaging Dorset’s schoolchildren was one important
outcome; perhaps even more significant was the role
LIFE played in establishing strong working relationships
between the UHP, fire and rescue, police, local council, friends of the heaths and other stakeholders and
community groups. Mr Spring well remembers his first
visit to a meeting of the local heaths crime reduction

Finding something that all parties could agree on (“we
want to see a reduction in heath fires and we hate offroad motorcyclists”), Mr Spring went along to the next
partnership meeting and made a suggestion: “We all lay
down our arms and we work on the heath fires, we work
on the off-road motorcycling, and if we can tidy those up
it would be nicer for everybody...[Illegal] off-road motor-

cycling was a massive problem when mini motos were
all the rage.”
With the LIFE project providing a framework, new relationships were built between the various parties to
achieve these common goals. For instance, by requesting support from the police for ‘traffic management’,
rather than ‘heath fires’, a lower priority response,
the Fire and Rescue Service were able to tackle fires
quickly and without massively inconveniencing commuters, as had been the case. Similarly, a scheme was
set up to train volunteer wardens, who would be able

o f

It was a really, really
enjoyable thing to be part of:
the outcomes were fantastic

to accurately inform the
firefighters of the location of a heath fire, and
of any special features
that were a priority for
conservation (e.g. colonies of sundews; breeding sites of protected fauna).

“It was very, very effective,” recalls Mr Spring. “We got
accurate calls, we could deploy the right resources, we
knew where the best access point was, we could prioritise the most important environmental risks.”

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The effectiveness of the framework is shown in his station’s heath fire statistics: “The outcome of all this is that
the stats went from 232 to 32. In 2006, the hottest, driest summer, 40 degree heat, I think we had something
like 11 fires on the heathlands. The following year we got
it down to four,” says Mr Spring proudly.

The seeds sown by LIFE are still bearing fruit in other ways, including an annual training session run by
Dorset Fire and Rescue with the volunteer group and
the heath wardens. The fire and rescue service also
supports a current UHP education scheme called the
‘arson courtroom drama’, where the UHP Education
Officer visits schools and runs a drama session based
around the trial of a pupil caught setting a heath fire,
with the children playing the parts of the police, judge,
firefighters and so on. “Both my children have been
through it and it has changed their perception” says
Mr Spring. “Heath fires were just something that happened when I was a child and now it’s definitely seen
as a very, very grubby crime.”

The Dorset Heaths project pioneered a new
ap­proach to conserving urban heaths, revolving around educating schoolchildren, improving
the ability of the Dorset Fire and Rescue service
to tackle the fires and developing a volunteer
warden scheme.

51

Building on LIFE’s legacy
The partnership approach established during the
LIFE project has become “mainstream now”, adds Mr
Spring. “The local community heathland meeting’s going on at the fire station, the police are fully engaged
in it. It was a really, really enjoyable thing to be part
of. And yeah, the outcomes were fantastic!”

THE PROJECT

d o n e

filling thing I’ve been involved in in 25 years in
the fire service, was the
relationships that were
built around that work
across disparate groups
that clearly weren’t getting on before. There isn’t anyone on that group that if they rang me at 3 o’clock in
the morning I wouldn’t go and help them; six years on I
know the same would apply to others.”

The LIFE project was essential to this process, he believes: “I wouldn’t have met these people, wouldn’t have
had that close working relationship, wouldn’t have been
able to have the frank conversations with the police inspectors had it not been for the LIFE project. It’s been a
very, very useful framework.”

“It’s nice to get the outcomes like that, but what was
massively satisfying for me, and it’s still the most ful-

t h i n g s

As well as the satisfaction of being involved in a very
successful project and in seeing active hostility between people turn into a strong partnership, Mr Spring

says it has also changed some of his views on nature
conservation: “I went to a fire in May, a 10-pump heath
fire, and I got put on the spot to do a live radio interview. One of my colleagues, his wife is an environmental protection officer, and she came back with some
very positive feedback because I actually felt comfortable, I knew what I was talking about. We’d lost a section
of heathland that was on a southern facing upslope
and I was able to expand on that as a very healthy
environment for some of the protected reptiles and all
that kind of thing. I’m not an environmentalist - previously I was an avid off-road motorcyclist (!) - as far as
I’m concerned animals are things you have with chips!
I’d never shown any interest; now I’m very keen on that
kind of thing.”
Project number: LIFE00 NAT/UK/007079
Title: Dorset Heaths – Combatting urban pressures degrading European heathlands in Dorset
Beneficiary: Dorset County Council, Planning Division (Urban Heaths Partnership)
Contact: Heather Tidball
Email: urbanheaths@dorsetcc.gov.uk

MEET THE CITIZENS

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LIFE lays a foundation
for renewable building

Christina Böckl

The S-House is a remarkable building, but what’s it like to work there? Or to design or build houses made
from straw or other renewable materials? We meet two of the building’s residents, a man who has built a
house insulated with straw bales and two students learning about using renewable materials in construction.

The S-House is a multi
award-winning demonstration building in Böheimkirchen,
Austria
constructed with the support
of the LIFE programme
(LIFE00 ENV/A/000243)
by the Centre for Acceptable Technology (GrAT).
Designed to improve energy efficiency, promote use
of renewable energy, and find
efficient uses for renewable raw
materials for an office building, notable features of the building include
the widespread use of straw bales in
construction, an innovative “straw screw”
for mounting wooden planks on bales used for
insulation, stone flooring to capture and retain heat
and a biomass storage stove. The S-House continues to
go from strength to strength as an exhibition and information centre and is currently being used as a training

base for actions forming part of the LIFE+ project, RENEW
BUILDING (LIFE08 ENV/A/000216). This seeks to disseminate know-how about construction methods that use
renewable resources and natural materials to architects,
builders, planners and others in the trade.

The residents
Christina Böckl is a secretary with GrAT and has recently
started working in the S-House part-time following the
birth of her daughter. “It’s an interesting building because it’s totally renewable and ecological,” she says.
“It’s much better than the place I worked before - a large
office with a lot of people inside. [That] was often very
noisy and the air was very bad because you couldn’t
open any windows, so it’s
much better here.”

“

Ms Böckl also says it
is “interesting because
there are always a lot of
people coming to have

a look and to get some information about this kind of
building... we had some people from Slovakia...a Korean
group...mostly from Austria but also a lot of international
visitors.” Large numbers of visitors do have one drawback however: “Sometimes it’s a little stressful when you
have 50 people all wanting something to eat with our
little kitchen, but yeah, it’s quite good,” she smiles.
“My father is a carpenter so I know a lot about wood
and wood construction, but I have learned a lot
about straw bales and ecological building facilities
here,” explains Ms Böckl. She adds that her father is
“very excited about the place because of the wood
construction and all the other projects we do here.”
Her family’s main concern though is that she has a
good working environment, “but they also
think that it’s good that I
work for a company that
takes responsibility for
ecological issues,” she
says proudly.

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I think it’s always good if you
have the possibility to buy local, it
doesn’t matter if it’s about food or if
it’s about construction materials

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“I think it’s always good if you have the possibility
to buy local, it doesn’t matter if it’s about food or if
it’s about construction materials. I think that’s a very
good thing to strengthen the region itself: to create
new jobs, to secure existing jobs; also because of the
transport, the CO2 emissions,” believes Ms Böckl, before adding “It’s not only the construction sector that
should think green, I think the whole EU should think
about the future of our children and future generations, and I think that’s an important thing also to
construct green buildings to leave a better environment for our children.”
Originally from Bavaria, Stefan Prokupek studied architecture at the Technical University of Munich before transferring to the Technical University of Vienna,
where he was first introduced to the theory and prac-

tice of sustainable building. He enjoyed this so much that
he came to work for GrAT in 2007 as a Scientific Assistant/Trainer. He is now based in the S-House “two or
thee days a week on a regular basis”, helping to deliver
training sessions as part of the LIFE+ RENEW BUILDING
project.
For Mr Prokupek, working in the building is a pleasure, because of “the seeing and the smelling...the colours...the surfaces... This is something
very special because of all
the mostly natural surfaces
- that you can see, for example the fibres inside the
walls.” Although he splits
his time between Böheimkirchen and GrAT’s office in
Vienna, he says “I just like
being here much more.”
This “seeing and feeling” is
a major benefit and legacy
of the LIFE S-House project, Mr Prokupek believes:

the difference between understanding it’s a good thing to
use renewable materials and the “wow” factor of being
in a building that uses them. “If you really have something they can walk into, they can see, this is just the
best thing to convince people. With this one example we
have the chance to show them not just the plans, but
what is here in reality.”
This, he believes, will be particularly important when it
comes to enabling budding architects to feel confident
about using straw bale construction and other renewable approaches. “If you see people getting their hands
on the materials and understanding how this type of
construction works, then they can really support it. Then
they can go to owners of buildings and tell them: this
is a good solution, I know about it, I tried it, I know that
it works.”
Mr Prokupek is confident that the demonstration work
of GrAT, realised through the LIFE S-House and RENEW
BUILDING projects, will lead to concrete results: “I am convinced that some of [the architecture students] will definitely use [straw bale construction]. I hope I can tell you
next time about the 15 buildings that were done like this.”

MEET THE CITIZENS

Since starting work in the S-House, Ms Böckl is very
much a convert to the cause of straw bale construction, in fact, if she was building or renovating her own
home, “as far as what I know now I would think of it
and also try to use it as far as possible,” she says.

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One barrier to growth of the sector is cost. “These
materials don’t have a huge industry behind them,
so they are just a little more expensive,” laments Mr
Prokupek. However, he concludes that it is getting easier
for architects to persuade clients of the value of straw
bale construction and that even worries about cost can
be overcome. “If you really start planning in such a sustainable way, it doesn’t actually need to be much more
expensive, because if you know the materials and know
about the combinations, then you could get to about the

Photo: Monique Braem

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same price. That’s why we want to teach the planners as
well as the craftsmen - if they know where they have to
work together then everything is much easier.”

The home-builder: Josef Petschko
Straw, one might say, is in Josef Petchsko’s blood.
Raised on a small farm near St. Polten and having
studied at agricultural college, in 2007 he began
working for AGRAR PLUS, a company dedicated to

the successful realisation of agricultural projects
around heat from biomass and the manufacturing
and marketing of agricultural products, including
straw bales.
When it came to building a new family home close to
his parents’ farm, Mr Petschko was thus very interested
in the possibilities of using straw bales for insulation.
After speaking to colleagues who had been involved in
straw bale insulation project, he attended an open day

“

We have to stop climate
change. I think you can use
this kind of construction
or straw as insulation all
over Europe

“

at the S-House in Böheimkirchen. “They were very interested in my project and they helped us with different
measurements from the harvest through to the installation of the straw bales.”
With this advice and working together with his carpenter, Mr Petschko adapted the design of his planned new
home to enable the use of straw bales for insulation.
The bales came from his parents’ farm, the important
thing being to achieve “good strong bales with a high
density.”
In all, some 1 000 bales were needed, with standard
dimensions of 36 cm x 50 cm x 80/90 cm. Installation
“was quite easy”, recalls Mr Petschko, with the preplanning meaning that most bales fitted easily into
the wall. For those more awkward corner positions, a
chainsaw was used to cut the bales down to the correct size.

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The architects (of tomorrow)
What do the architecture students think? Here’s what two students from the Technical University of Vienna
(TUW) who were doing practical training at the S-House had to say:
Birgit Schwarzenberger
“Straw is a cool material - it’s funny to work with it, but
in Lower Austria there are lots of farmers, so it makes
sense to use local materials. It’s really cool using clay
and straw and reed; I think there’s so much concrete
and polystyrene in the world, and these are materials
that are sustainable.”

the family came to have a look during construction
and they are also interested in how to live in a straw
house; it’s not so common.”

Construction of the house began in October 2009 and
Mr Petschko and his family have been living there since
August 2011. “We enjoy it very much: it’s a good climate in the house. A small pellet boiler is the only heating source we use.”

He adds that “in my working field it’s also interesting
because AGRAR PLUS has done a project on straw bale
insulation and we are looking for further projects in
this direction. The S-House team has got the certification for the straw bales for common use and I think we
should keep in contact to get a complete chain from
the farmer to the customer. We have the link to the
farmers, we have a broad network over Lower Austria
and further. I think this could be a way to bring straw
bales into common use.”

Mr Petschko says that “friends are not at the stage to
build their own houses but they are very interested”
in what he has done. “Neighbours and members of

If someone builds a house in a city or town, they
wouldn’t have the links to a farmer who can supply
straw bales or to carpenters willing and able to work

Peter Sedlak
“[On this load-bearing wall], this reed mat is fixed on
a piece of wood and between there’s an air gap, so it
works like ventilation. It’s two years old and there’s no
signs of any problems. For some simple building next
to your house, it’s very good, very fast. So for simple
purposes, straw and reed particularly, even without a
clay finish, I find very, very good actually.”

with straw, points out Mr Petschko. “And so it’s necessary to build up a community or a network that can
offer this.” EU support for renewable building initiatives such as the S-House through programmes such
as LIFE is very important, he believes. “We have to
stop climate change. I think you can use this kind of
construction or straw as insulation all over Europe.”

4 MEET THE guardians
Guardians of land and sea: shepherds, graziers, farmers, fishermen and
landowners have played a key role in demonstrating, through the LIFE
programme, new and effective ways of marrying the demands of food
production with those of nature conservation and environmental management. This chapter gives their personal perspectives on how LIFE has
helped.

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A passion for conservation
with ponies
Marc Philippot from Wallonia, Belgium spends half his time as a teacher in a technical college in electronics and mechanics; “the other half of my time I spend on my land”.
They had experts that I could benefit from, especially
concerning the butterfly. We adapted the number of
horses by hectare. I have three ponies. At the beginning I
was concerned that there were so few animals; I thought
that we could put more horses on the land. But I saw the
value of their approach. They also introduced an abandoned area. It was a good learning experience.

I have been interested in nature conservation since I was
very young. I am a civil engineer by training, but I follow
courses in nature conservation at the University of Liege.
I saw that there was a way of managing the land with
horses and cattle and so I bought the land with the idea
of doing this. It was very fortunate that the LIFE project
was taking place at this time. It was good for my initiative to receive the support of LIFE.
I learned with the project. I
thought that when I bought
the land that I would wait
before cutting down the pine,
but the project wanted to cut
the trees immediately. It was
a fast action to restore the
habitat.

THE PROJECT
The Tailles Plateau, which has altitudes of 500650m, is the highest plateau in Wallonia. It contains
several types of bog habitats, forests and grasslands and gives shelter to many rare and endangered species. A LIFE project was carried out to
enhance the connectivity of these habitats.

Expanding horizons
At the beginning of the LIFE project I had six hectares
and now I have 25 ha. I bought my neighbour’s land
when they cut down the pines, and also the Walloon government gave me some land that it had bought to manage with ponies.
MEET THE GUARDIANS

“My wife’s family has a house in the Ardennes; I bought
land nearby in 2000 for conservation purposes and I contacted administrations and associations to see what we
could do to preserve it. I discovered Natura 2000 and a
LIFE project. After they saw my land, they enlarged the
project area because they thought that my land was very
interesting. The valley has a rich biodiversity.

Marc Philippot

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The impact of the project
is already observable in terms
of biodiversity

on. But they are surprised that I have such beautiful
ponies.
The thing that surprised me also was the need for money.
The first couple of years I made a loss, the third year I
broke even and after that I made a small gain, which is
enough to pay for the work. It takes a large investment of
time to cover your costs. Maintaining barbed-wire fences
and inserting posts in order to control the ponies takes me
one or two days a week.

Landowners sold land because it was not interesting
to them without the pines (a hectare of pines is worth
roughly €13 000). I was surprised by the lack of interest of some other landowners. The region gives
money if they maintain the land in an environmental
way, but they weren’t interested.
When I bought the land, I wasn’t aware of all the
wildlife there, but I saw over the first year its tremendous richness. We discovered many plant species, including orchids, as well as birds such as red
kite. The impact of the project is already observable
in terms of biodiversity. They dug little ponds, which
are benefitting dragonfly species. Deer are also more

prevalent than before, and the large egret now comes
every winter.
It’s important to have a good relationship with the
hunters. At the beginning they were very sceptical but
now they are happy to see many deer on the site,
so relations are good. It’s necessary to regulate the
numbers of wild boar and deer on the land because
they destroy the grassland.

Stranger in a strange land
For the people in the village, I am ET – a strange being – because the land is not good for putting animals

I bought two more hectares this year. I want to connect
sites. But the LIFE project has finished, so it’s taking a lot
longer. I have contacted some local landowners who have
agreed to sell me their land when their pines are cut down
in 10, 15, 20 years’ time. I want to have a good area of
land where I can put the horses in spring time and not
disturb plants and butterflies. The bad lands were easy to
buy, but good land is much more difficult. I aim to have 40
ha; which is a good amount for a half-time teacher, halftime farmer.”

Fostering a fondness for nature
A landowner from Denmark and a farmer from Portugal reveal how their involvement in LIFE projects has furthered their love of nature.
A butterfly flaps its wings
Carl Christian Rasmussen and Lisbet Kruse Banke
are retired biology teachers and landowners in Jutland, Denmark.
“We have a well-known biologist in Denmark who specialises in butterflies and it was just by chance that he was in
our area, and he thought that he’d try our road to see if he
could find this specific butterfly: the marsh fritillary butterfly
(Euphydryas aurinia). And there suddenly it was on our land.

order to maintain and increase the range of the butterfly
– for example don’t use fertilisers. We never used a lot of
chemicals on the land so the conservation measures that
the project carried out were easier for us.
But we can no longer make winter feed for cows – we
have to buy it from other farmers. You can’t plough
grass fields any more. There are a lot of things that we
can’t do any longer. We are living in a land which is more
sand than soil, but we were aware that the land was
valuable, however. We have an extremely rare
plant here.

The butterfly lays its eggs on a specific plant (Devil’s bit
scabious – Succisa pratensis) and a lot of habitat protection was necessary. We were contacted by the environment
ministry. The local authority made a plan of how to take
care of the area together with us.
The whole plan was finished but
THE PROJECT
there was no money. Two or three
The ASPEA project achieved a favourable
years later the LIFE project came
conservation status for the endangered target
up with the money.
species through the strengthening of habitats:
it protected more than 500 ha of existing and
We have always been interested in
potential marsh fritillary butterfly habitats within
nature; that’s why we bought the
three Natura 2000 sites in northern Jutland. The
land 30 years ago. We have 120
project serves as a good demonstration of restoha and it’s beautiful. The Naturation followed up by recurring activities such as
ral Conservation Association lists
grazing.
rules on how to treat the area in

We learnt a lot from the project because we followed
it very intensely. Everyday we talked with the man who
was in charge. We didn’t understand why we had to remove those trees or do this thing whatever it was, so it
really has been an eye-opener. We learned how to remove trees in a wood without damaging the other trees.

We had a very clever
forestry worker on the
project. We learned a lot
from him. We told him
that we didn’t want the
remaining trees to stand
like soldiers in the field –
to be too vertical – and
he understood what we
meant.
There was a large area with a lot of pine wood and we
thought that one day when we can afford it and we have
time to do it ourselves, it would be so nice to get rid of
that. And suddenly it happened. It became very beautiful, a much more beautiful area.

Developing interests
The initial biologist made the butterfly species sound so
interesting. He brought pictures and explained why it was
important to preserve this particular butterfly. In fact, we
began to study butterflies, and all the kids in the area also
became interested.
But we had one neighbour who wasn’t interested in it at all.
They wanted to raise the water level on his land, and there
were many harsh words. Nobody was able to convince him
of the worth of the project, so now he has sold his property.
We’ve also become interested in bird life because of the
project and look out for birds every year. We count their
eggs: it’s a hobby. We’ve visited a LIFE project in Extremadura (Spain), through the bird watching organisations.
Since the project we’ve continued to look out for the special
butterfly. We can see it moving around and growing steadily in number. When they found the butterfly it was only on

Julio Canas
a very small area, and now it’s over a much larger area.
The biologist told us that it’s very dangerous if they are
only found on a small area, therefore it’s a success that it’s
now found in several sites.
We’ve counted 40 different butterflies on our land. The
place in Denmark where there are the most has 41. We
need to find one more!”

One farmer’s love of lesser kestrels
Julio Canas is a farmer in Castro Verde, southern
Portugal, whose sheep graze on semi natural dry
grasslands rich in steppe avifauna. He speaks with
pride about his involvement in LIFE projects to conserve the endangered lesser kestrel.
“I have more than 1 500 sheep [mostly raised for meat – see
box - but some wool is produced too]. I try to keep the grasslands ‘healthy’. I always saw lesser kestrels in my farm, but
I never paid attention to them. I loved to watch them getting
out of their nests in my barn and hunting grasshoppers in
my field. I did not even know their correct name.
But one day I saw two ladies (they were from the LIFE
project) wandering around my property and I asked them:
“What are you doing here? This is private property!” They
said that they were looking for lesser kestrels, the ones
you have nesting in the barn. “Ah! Ok, if it is that, there is
no problem. I like those little fellows.” They replied: “We
would like to ask you whether you want to have more nests
in your barn for free?” I immediately said yes!

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I was the first one to have LIFE birds nests (in 2002), and
immediately my neighbour farmers also wanted kestrel
nests. I had two or three pairs and now I have 12 pairs. In
Portugal, there are only 350 breeding pairs, and according
to the LIFE project workers my property is the best area
in Portugal for them to breed! I am proud to have these
birds around.
If it wasn’t for LIFE I would never have taken care of
the birds or placed nests on my farm. I never received a
‘dime’ for allowing the nests to be placed or maintaining
the good management of the habitats for the birds on
my 700 ha inside the Natura 2000 network site. I don´t
want money from CAP agri-environmental measures; it
is too bureaucratic and not flexible. I can have more birds
as things are.”

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THE PROJECT
The initial LIFE Nature project made a significant
contribution to the Natura 2000 network and
greatly benefited the target species lesser kestrel
(Falco naumanni). It also helped draw up preliminary zonal plans for two of the three SPAs identified for action under the project, Vale do Guadiana
and Campo Major.
Project number: LIFE02 NAT/P/008481
Title: Peneireiro - Re-establishment of the Lesser
Kestrel (Falco naumanni) in Portugal
Beneficiary: Liga para a Protecção da Natureza
Contact: Rita Alcazar
Email: lpn.natureza@lpn.pt

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THE PROJECT
The follow-up LIFE+ project, EstepÁrias, has built
on this work and is extending farming and game
management practices for steppe bird conservation and introducing a new kestrel breeding site.
The project also targets the great bustard (Otis
tarda) and little bustard (Tetrax tetrax).
Project number: LIFE07 NAT/P/000654
Title: EstepÁrias - Conservation of Great Bustard, Little Bustard and Lesser Kestrel in the Baixo
Alentejo cereal steppes
Beneficiary: Liga para a Protecção da Natureza
Contact: Rita Alcazar
Email: lpn.natureza@lpn.pt

The sale of meat from herds grazed on
nature conservation areas is a potentially important additional income stream
for farmers in many parts of Europe.
“Reviving a niche market really was
what persuaded me to go ahead. I believe there are opportunities for a niche
market for beef products,” explains Robert Pritchard, a farmer who is grazing
cattle on the Anglesey Fens SAC in the
UK as part of an ongoing LIFE Nature
project (LIFE07 NAT/UK/000948 – see
page 79). “You need long-term security
to develop that through cattle breeding… With a long-term plan for grazing
you would be able to develop that market,” he believes.

One of the lasting outcomes of the
Diljevallei project in Belgium (LIFE98
NAT/B/000571), which concluded in
2003, has been the development of a
market for “Nature Meat” (natuurvlees)
from the cattle grazed on the project sites.
The cattle, which are not treated with antibiotics, graze on the unfertilised former
wetlands in the summer and are fed with
hay grown on the farm in the winter.
Marc Arnalsteens, one of the graziers
involved, who sells the meat directly to
consumers via his farm shop, believes
that the presence of the cows in the nature reserve serves as a good marketing
tool: “most customers are regular walkers in the area.”

MEET THE GUARDIANS

Developing nature products

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View from a Swedish plateau
Arne Jönsson is a landowner and cattle farmer in Kinnekulle, Sweden.

Arne Jönsson

“The LIFE project organisers said that we should go back
to how the land was 200 years ago, when there were
cows and grazing on this land, and I thought that this
was interesting.
We agreed that whatever action was taken should be
agreed on my side. This has worked out very well indeed. We have a meeting, we talk and we say that
maybe we should cut
down these trees and do
so and so. This contact
has continued after the
project; every month we
talk.
Some of the land was
just bush, which is good
for shooting game, but
nothing more. Then we
got the money to repair
the land. This has been
very helpful, and the
objective now is to keep
cattle. This has worked
out for the best for both
parties.
Most [fellow landowners]
thought that it would be
negative to have a nature

THE PROJECT
Kinnekulle is a 265 m high plateau in southern
Sweden that hosts a particularly rich and diverse
set of habitats and species thanks to centuries of
extensive grazing and mowing. However, smallscale farming has lost much of its economic
viability in the last century and a LIFE project
was established to restore habitats that depend
on grazing or hay-making for their favourable
conservation status.

reserve, because the value of the farm would go down.
But the positive side was that they paid me a certain
amount of money for starting the project…and we have
made a profit out of it. We keep cattle on the land, and
we had not hitherto thought of doing this, because we
didn’t have the possibility to clear the land of all the
bushes.
It is profitable if you run it in the correct way, but it’s
not easy. It’s requires a lot of effort and a lot of investment in building (infrastructure for the cattle): I got
25% from the EU but 75% I had to pay myself.

Nature in bloom
This alvar land contains very little soil on top of a limestone base. Cows compact the ground and the grass

starts growing. But don’t forget we also have all these
flowers coming up, especially orchids, which were under
the bushes and couldn’t grow. And now they can open up
and we have a lot of beautiful orchids on the land.
I learnt how this all could be done successfully. This bush
land turned into very good grazing land in two years and
is still improving. I was sensitive about conservation issues before the project, but maybe not as much as I am
today. In the water holes we have found salamander. It’s
one the animals that is benefitting [from the project], but
there could be many, many more.
We have had a lot of tourists walking on the trails here
on the farm and also on the whole mountain. Since we
opened up the land, they can see all around and down to
the lake. It’s nice for them to see this type of landscape.
It’s easy to come here; there are parking spaces. [built
as part of the project]. New lodgings should be provided.
I’ve been thinking about it, but there must be some interested person who can run a bed and breakfast.”
Project number: LIFE02 NAT/S/008484
Title: Kinnekulle plateau mountain - restoration
and conservation
Beneficiary: Västra Götaland County Administrative Board
Contact: Maria Thordarson
Email: maria.thordarson@lansstyrelsen.se

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Crofting is a LIFE choice
Archie MacDonald is a working crofter on the island of Benbecula in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland.

THE PROJECT
This ongoing LIFE project is working to secure and
improve the conservation status of 70% of the
world’s machair habitat and associated species by
marrying the interests of conservation with local
agricultural practices, particularly the crofting
tradition.

Archie MacDonald is a typical crofter. “I was born in Benbecula and went to school here, then I went to college
in mainland Scotland and learned to be a joiner. I came
back in 1978 to help my father with his crofts when he
became ill and I’ve been here ever since. As well as the
crofts, I run a small building business, which I’ve had
since I returned to the island.”
Archie’s father was a full-time crofter with four crofts and
he raised a family of four children with what he earned
off the land. But times have changed. “I now personally
run seven crofts. I inherited two on the east side of the
island from a grandfather and I bought one. These days,
the land doesn’t give enough return to do it full-time.
Your money doesn’t go as far, although we also have
more of life’s luxuries than people did then! My father
didn’t have a dishwasher or things like that!”

The value of crofting
Crofting has tremendous heritage value on Hebridean
islands such as Benbecula. It evolved as a means of
sustaining populations after turbulent social periods in
the 18th and 19th Centuries. It is estimated that today
around 10% of people in the islands and highlands of
Scotland live in crofting households. An individual croft is
usually a smallholding of around 2-5 ha of land used for
growing cereals for feeding livestock.
Benbecula is typified by the machair, which is a unique
coastal habitat listed in Annex I of the Habitats Directive
and found only on the west coasts of Scotland and Ireland. It is formed by calcium rich sand being blown onto
acidic soil and provides habitat for an array of bird species as well as flowers and insects. The extensive grazing

Archie MacDonald

MEET THE GUARDIANS

Benbecula is an island off the Atlantic coast of Scotland.
It had a resident population of just 1 249 according to
the 2001 census and many people on the island depend
on traditional forms of farming activity along with developing sources of income such as rural tourism. The
island is typified by crofting activities – a type of farming
unique to the Scottish highlands and islands.

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and low intensity crop rotations of crofting also contribute to creating the conditions necessary for many
ground-nesting birds such as the corncrake (Crex crex)
and corn bunting (Miliaria calandra).
Archie explains the particularities of the land. “The soil
here is very light and sandy and manganese deficient.
We have tried growing mainland varieties of oats and
barley here, but they only grow if you spray them with
manganese and whatever else they are deficient in. The
traditional island varieties of oats, rye and bere – a type
of barley - can grow here without any additives. The soil
here is also very unstable and doesn’t hold the water, so
we need more rainfall. Luckily we usually get it!”
Despite the strong traditions, important changes were
starting to take place in crofting. People were using more
heavy machinery – notably combine harvesters – to
do the work rather than more labour-intensive
practices. More people were keeping sheep,
as cattle became harder to keep and more
expensive. People also favoured big-bale
silage processes - for generating fermented, high moisture fodder for
feeding animals - where crops are
wrapped in plastic.
Many of these practices were
reducing the opportunities for
birds such as the corncrake
or corn bunting to breed successfully. They also had social
disadvantages that threaten
the future of the traditional
way of life. “Because there is so
much heavy machinery involved
in crofting these days, we tend to
keep children away from it, whereas

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The project has helped local
crofters maintain some of their
traditional activities and supported
people who were on the brink of
abandoning some practices

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in the old days the kids would have been more involved,
learning about the practices as they grew up.”

Crofting on LIFE support
“The first I heard about the LIFE project was that I saw a
meeting advertised. All the crofters were invited to talk
with the leaders of the project. It sounded interesting,
but we were also wondering what it was all about and
what the catch was! They explained that they wanted to
encourage the traditional ways of harvesting and cropping, rather than going totally mechanised.
“The project has helped local crofters maintain some
of their traditional activities and supported people who
were on the brink of abandoning some practices. I kept
a hectare of crop for seed and the project cut it for me,
which was a help. The traditional reaper-binder that the
project bought means that you can cut the crop when the
grain has a higher moisture content and leave it to dry
and ripen. Bundles of cut crop are formed into a stack,
known as a stook, to dry.”
By encouraging the late harvesting of crops, reducing
the amount of arable crop undersown with grass and
favouring best practice cultivation techniques, including
leaving bundles of stacked crops in the fields, the project
hopes to provide better opportunities for ground-nesting
birds.

“Now people are seeing that others are benefiting from
the project and understand what the project is doing.
They think, ‘rather than put everything in big bale silage, I’ll leave a wee field myself and do that’. The project has also got people asking questions about how we
can maintain our traditional practices and, for example,
where we can source the traditional machinery that we
need.
“Most people here keep an eye on the number of corncrakes because we’re still rather fond of them. People
talk about what date they heard the first corncrake of
the year. They’re still there, but you don’t hear so many
of them and it’s not to the same extent as when I was
younger. Personally I try to help them and, for example,
I harvest from the inside of my field outwards so that if
there are any chicks, they can escape from the field.
“Through an agri-scheme we don’t cut anything before
1st August, but the problem then is that on that date
everyone is cutting and it is difficult for the birds to find
an escape. We try to stagger it and delay some of the
cutting. This is easier to do with the corn crops. But the
grasses start to lose some of their nutritional value
much sooner.
“Another area where the project really did help was in
collecting more seaweed, and laying it on the crofts with
their new spreader which is beyond the reach of the average crofter. Before artificial fertilisers came along seaweed was always what crofters used as it worked very
well with the type of nutrient-poor soil we have here.
However, a lot of manpower was needed, with people
going down to the beach and forking the seaweed into
carts to bring back to the crofts.
“I’d like to use more seaweed because the price of fertiliser keeps going up. The main obstacle is the amount

of work involved in collecting it and you have to be there
at the right time, usually after bad weather, and before
the weather changes and it gets swept back out to sea.
I have my own spreader but it certainly doesn’t have the
same output capacity as the one the project introduced.”

Remaining challenges
The LIFE project will run until the end of 2013 and although it is helping to change attitudes and understanding of traditional crofting practices, there are still challenges to be faced. “A particular challenge we have here
is the grey-lag goose. Numbers have really increased in
the past 10 years. I think it started with a local nature
reserve and also with local gamekeepers doing such a

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good job of getting rid of the hooded crow which used to
take the goose eggs.
“We don’t think that the RSPB are keen on reducing the
numbers of the goose, but on a bright night, a flock of
geese can totally destroy a crop. Twenty years ago a
large flock would have been 50 geese. Now you can get
a visit from two or three hundred geese in one night and
that’s your crop gone.”
The project has experimented with local goose-scarers,
who physically move to where geese have been spotted to scare them away from crops with gunfire. It is
also demonstrating the validity of cheap fencing as a
long-term and sustainable protection of crops from

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goose damage. This seemingly simplistic method works
because the geese cannot land in a field of crops and so
have to enter along the ground. Finding methods that
are affordably sustainable beyond the duration of the
project is a key hope from the project for crofters such
as Archie.
Project number: LIFE08 NAT/UK/000204
Title: Scottish machair – Conserving machair habitats and species in a suite of Scottish Natura sites
Beneficiary: The Royal Society for the Protection
of Birds (RSPB)
Contact: Rebecca Cotton
Email: Rebecca.Cotton@rspb.org.uk

MEET THE GUARDIANS

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LIFE’s graziers
of the Hungarian grasslands
As part of an ongoing LIFE Nature project – LIFE07 NAT/H/000324 – the project beneficiary, the Hortobágy
Environmental Association, is encouraging farmers in the town of Balmazújváros to start grazing again with
native curly-horned Racka sheep. Here we meet four of the farmers that have taken up the challenge.

“I have been living in this area of Hungary for 61 years
and working with livestock for 40 years. I had heard about
traditional methods from my grandfather, who said the
Hortobágy grassland has to be grazed, but I had no experience of traditional grazing before the LIFE project. I had
been an intensive pig farmer and also kept horses.

János Király

I live close to the project site at Balmazújváros and I saw
the long-horned grey cattle and Racka sheep and I was
curious, so I found out more and decided to get involved
in the LIFE project, keeping Racka sheep.
Racka are not particularly difficult to keep, but they need
more space because of their long, twisted horns. They
are also quite shy; it is not that easy to herd them with
sheepdogs. They are not shy of people though and are
very tolerant. We have a saying that sheep are biting in
the front, kicking in the back and bucking in the middle,
but I still love to sit on them!
The Hortobágy Environmental Association, has been a
great help. Now I am thinking about getting more sheep

and I also have my horses out on the project site. I like
being involved in anything to do with the grassland here.
I can travel on horseback all the way to Hortobágy village, 25 km away, just on grassland: that is wonderful.
I am looking into the possibilities of starting horse-riding
tours of the grassland and the Racka sheep would be
something good for people doing the tours to look at.
So, indirectly they would be a source of income. I have
been riding horses and competing in horse-riding events
for a long time. I would love to pass on my knowledge of
horses to visitors to this area.
The LIFE project has changed my view of nature conservation. Even smaller things like litter: now I tell people to
pick up rubbish and not to drop it! I feel like a warden of
the grasslands, not only maintaining the habitat, but also
looking after it.
I would most certainly recommend to other farmers
to try traditional, extensive grazing if there is enough
grassland available. That is the only way to maintain the

habitat - people cannot maintain the grasslands, if there
is no livestock on it, it will go wild.
All being well, I am going to keep farming Racka sheep
after the project. The meat from the sheep will go to my
family. We really like Racka meat - it tastes better than
meat from other sheep.”

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breeds. I know the project area very well and I have
some Racka sheep already, so I thought it would be
a good idea to increase the number. I had 13 Racka
sheep before the project.

Ferenc Oláh
“I have been living in this area for 21 years and a farmer
for the last 20 of those. I had been working as a warden around Balmazújváros prior to this project, so I was
already thinking about nature conservation. I had been
helping to protect birds, install nest boxes and all sorts
of things. I am also a member of the Hungarian Ornithological Society.
I heard from the shepherd of the LIFE project about the
possibility of keeping Racka sheep and other traditional

I usually start work at 6 o’clock in the morning. In
winter, I leave fodder for the sheep outside and also
water and more fodder in the barn. I also go and
check the sheep several times a day, especially during the lambing season. I then leave more fodder and
water in the evening. Springtime is the least enjoyable time as I have to clean the barn after the sheep
have been in there for several months. It takes two
full days to clean up after them.

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I would recommend
traditional grazing to other farmers
– the original livestock native to an
area makes the best use of
its grassland
I would recommend traditional grazing to other farmers – the original livestock native to an area makes the
best use of its grassland. Traditional grazing methods
have evolved in such a way that it is a good way of
farming.”

I much prefer keeping native livestock. With Racka
sheep, even if the grassland is not as good, this breed
can make better use of it than non-native breeds,
such as Merino. The Italian market is looking for
Racka meat. I am also thinking about using the milk,
cheese and other products from the Racka for additional income.

István Szanka
“I live in Balmazújváros, where I was born. My family
grows crops: corn, wheat and sunflowers. We started
our involvement with the LIFE project this year [2011].
My grandfather used to keep Racka sheep when he was
younger, so my parents know something about traditional grazing through him.
We live near to the project site, so the shepherd contacted us and asked if we would like to be involved and
we said yes.

MEET THE GUARDIANS

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The LIFE project hasn’t changed my views about the Hortobágy area, but it is helping me live out the traditional
way of life that I like. In this area extensive grazing is
very important.

We are starting an agri-tourism business - my parents
have built a guest house, so it will be really good to show
tourists traditional Hungarian animals of the Puzsta, like
the Racka and the ‘szürke szarvasmarha’, the Hungarian
Grey cattle.
This project will help because if tourists come to stay with
us, going to see the sheep will be one extra thing they can
do. Maybe we can buy some traditional sheep-herding costumes, which the tourists could wear and take photos of
themselves with the sheep. I think they would be really
happy with that.
Visitors will also be able to eat the meat of the Racka
sheep and know exactly where it comes from and it will be
better-tasting than meat bought in a store.
My second degree is in agriculture and environment, so
I think it is really important to look after nature. But you
have to show and teach farmers first and tell them the
rules after, rather than the other way round.
I think it’s a good idea for farmers with the time and money
to invest in traditional grazing, because they can get closer
to nature. This will also stop urbanisation and allow people
to stay in the village; that’s important for everybody.”

THE PROJECT
A high level of grazing is fundamental to the
Pannonic salt steppe and marsh habitat targeted
by this project, which is building upon the habitat
management successes of an earlier LIFE project
in Hortobágy: LIFE02 NAT/HU/008638. Long-term
protection of this endangered habitat requires
a sustainable grazing system which can only be
achieved by getting the locals involved again and
generating a long-term interest in keeping livestock.

József Bodnár

The best thing about being involved with this LIFE project
has been being able to get in touch with other people in
the area with the same interests - both in cultural heritage and in keeping livestock such as Racka sheep. I plan
to keep increasing the size of my Racka flock after the
project ends.”

“I have been living in this area for 34 years; I was born
here. As a child, my family was involved in farming, but
I worked as an Internet radio DJ until three years ago,
when I came back to traditional farming. This is really
the continuation of my childhood.
I farm poultry and goats, as well as keeping Racka sheep.
It’s quite easy to work with the Racka, even though they
are wilder than merino. They tolerate circumstances better,
they are hardier: they were born to graze these grasslands.
The most enjoyable thing for me is continuing what I
saw in my childhood - the cultural heritage. I stopped
deejaying because it was not very rewarding culturally. I
really enjoy reading about the shepherd life and culture
and I find it a rewarding experience. Shepherd culture is
our cultural heritage, especially in the Hortobágy region.
Traditional grazing is a way of maintaining our culture.
The Hortobágy Environmental Association has helped me
to increase my numbers of sheep. I really want to start
generating additional income from cheese and milk from
the Racka and my goats. The LIFE project has been perfect timing because it has helped me to increase Racka
sheep numbers. I want to keep all the ewes and sell the
meat of the males.

Living with the wolf at the door
Local stakeholders – a dog breeder and two sheep farming families – share their experiences of participating in two Italian-led LIFE Nature projects that aimed to conserve endangered populations of wolves
and bears while reducing conflict between humans and these large carnivores.

The LIFE projects – COEX (LIFE04 NAT/IT/000144) and
the still ongoing EX-TRA (LIFE07 NAT/IT/000502) –
have aimed to raise awareness and demonstrate a more
positive coexistence between local stakeholders and
these animals. Practical measures have included providing farmers with fencing and specially-bred livestock
guard dogs to help limit damage from attacks by large
carnivores.
Freddy Barbarossa is a policeman and part-time
dog breeder in the Province of L’Aquila in Abruzzo,
Italy
“I’m President of the Abruzzo sheepdog association –
an organisation that was founded many years ago but
in 2005 became a specialist in the rearing of Abruzzo
sheepdogs – a special breed that can be used to protect

livestock from wolf or bear damage. (These dogs grow
up alongside their flocks and form strong bonds with the
sheep.) Although the species has been in existence for
over 2000 years, it had started to lose its working dog
traits, as it was becoming more a breed for dog shows
or a pet.

Abruzzo pups
We were slightly involved with the LIFE COEX project;
we gave a couple of puppies to one of the farmers.
Under the EX-TRA project, however, we’re participating more actively. The aim initially was to establish
a network of dogs for the farmers of L’Aquila; and
now we’re expanding the network to include Frosinone
(Lazio), Tuscany and Orvieto (Umbria).

We’ve already gained a good deal of positive experience under LIFE in terms of trait selection through DNA
screening and cross-breeding, in order to get exactly
the type of dog that we need. LIFE has allowed us to
carry out further DNA research that has enabled us to
provide better guarantees of a [typical Abruzzo] dog
than in previous years. We’ve also received feedback
from the original shepherd and this has been
THE PROJECT
very helpful for us.
The COEX project implemented a series of practical measures to stimulate the use of tools to
We’ve produced a manprevent the damage caused by wolves and bears
ual with the basic guideon livestock in five European countries. A key result
lines and we also run
was an improvement in attitudes and knowledge of
training courses, started
stakeholders about large carnivores.
under LIFE, for the farm-

Freddy Barbarossa

MEET THE GUARDIANS

Wolves (Canis lupus), bears (Ursus arctos) and other large
carnivores are usually perceived as a dangerous problem.
People who make a living from the land (as well as the
general public) see these animals as threats to themselves
or their livelihood. These challenges are particularly severe
in parts of southern Europe (Italy, Spain, France etc) where
the species are re-colonising after absences of tens of
years.

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sions. However, this is a long procedure and doesn’t fully
cover the value of the sheep that have been lost.

Sleepless nights
THE PROJECT

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Simonetta Basili,
Angelo De Planu

We decided to participate in
the LIFE project as; frankly,
The EX-TRA project aims to transfer the best
our quality of life had repractice and lessons learned from COEX into new
ally been lowered.” (‘I hadn’t
areas. In particular, it is seeking to expand the use
slept properly in the last
of damage-prevention tools – such as guard dogs
four years,” says Angelo. “I
and electric fences to protect livestock – and to
provide the relevant authorities with the neceswould stay awake all night
sary knowledge about conflict management.
in the truck and the sheep
were all around me, as they
knew I was protecting them.
But when I did occasionally fall asleep, the wolves would
ers, especially at the moment when we hand over the
manage to come and kill some of the sheep, or start wordog for the first time.
rying them.”)
A major challenge was to find sheep farmers who were
“When the ewes become scared their adrenaline level rises
willing to participate in the scheme. Once we had worked
and this can cause miscarriages later in the year. Moreover,
with them and they’d seen that the experience with the
the ewes produce less than half their usual amounts of
dogs was good, they then started talking about it to their
milk, or it can even go to zero, due to the high stress they
colleagues. It’s all word of mouth. They take a long-term
suffer. So we have another economic loss.
view and realise that if they invest in the dogs, it will
help in avoiding any further damage or problems in the
We decided to try the electric fencing and the sheepdogs.
future.”
We were a bit sceptical about the fencing: we couldn’t believe that a 1m fence could actually keep a wolf away, but
Angelo De Planu and his wife Simonetta Basili are
we noticed the difference immediately. We also have five
sheep farmers in Orvieto, Umbria (Italy)
dogs that were bred from the dogs that were donated during the LIFE project. These dogs have integrated perfectly
“We got involved in the LIFE COEX project as we were
having some problems with a wolf. Before [the species]
reappeared in the Orvieto area, the sheep could graze
freely day and night. Since the wolf started appearing
and killing our sheep, however, the only way for us to
protect the flock was to stay and watch over the sheep
during the night. We had made formal complaints for
compensation to the authorities on two to three occa-

[The] dogs have integrated
perfectly and immediately with
the flock and they’ve protected
the sheep from attacks

and immediately with the flock and they’ve protected the
sheep from attacks very well.
Afterwards everything has changed for the better. We’ve
found that the lambs are no longer disappearing, that is,
we would sometimes lose some 30 to 70 lambs during the
breeding season. An occasional sheep still goes missing,
but not the lambs.

Wily wolves
Later on we discovered that the wolf had learnt how to
jump the fence, so we added an extra strip to make it
higher. We advised the beneficiary that it would be useful
to have the fencing made higher from the start. With this
extra height, the attacks have stopped and we no longer
have to submit compensation claims to the province!
I wish there were more projects such as these; they bring
about positive changes to the land and to all those who
live on it. People’s attitude changes too and they start to
see that it is possible to improve their lives in harmony with
nature and with the authorities.”

Turning the tide on sea
turtle conservation in Sardinia
LIFE Nature support (2004-2008) helped to establish a centre for rehabilitating injured sea turtles on

Giuliano Fara, Laura Pireddu,
Daniele Denurra

the small island of Asinara, just off the coast of Sardinia (Italy). Outreach work with fishermen and other
marine sector stakeholders, as well as the general public, has been an important part of the centre’s

“Being the only recovery centre in Sardinia, we receive
sea turtles that need assistance from all over the region
and from Corsica,” explains Laura Pireddu, Manager of
the Loggerhead Sea Turtle Recovery Centre of Asinara.
“The animals we help are mainly those that have been
found in distress on the coast, or which have collided
with boats. We also care for turtles that become caught
up in fishing gear but incidents like this are less common
nowadays following our awareness campaigns with the
fishing sector. Thanks to LIFE funding we have a well
equipped centre and we can deal with different turtle
problems. We have a veterinary surgery and a series of
rehabilitation sea water tanks which are used to house
the turtles while they recover.”

Turtles suffering from these sorts of ailments and injuries have different periods of hospitalisation at the
recovery centre. Some only need to stay a few months
but others have been looked after for several years. Giuliano Fara from the centre’s technical team describes
how their longest staying turtle first arrived, “A sailing
boat had found two turtles trapped together in a fishing
line. They were fighting each other and by the time the
animals arrived at the centre one had an eye missing, a
broken fin and fractured skull.”

Turtle rehabilitation
One of the most common turtle problems that the recovery centre deals with is ‘floating syndrome’, an inability to dive for food. This condition can be caused by the
animals swallowing plastic or other objects which block

intestines, or by a bacterial infection from pollution. Internal and external cuts associated with fishing gear can
also reduce the animals’ strength to dive for food. Malnutrition and hypothermia can then follow.

Daniele Denurra, a vet
at the centre, continues, “That turtle stayed
with us for nearly three
years and he was actually healthy enough to
go back to the sea after
the first year of rehabilitation. However, we did
not know how well he

THE PROJECT
The Tartanet project enlarged the geographical
scope of actions taken to protect the loggerhead
turtle (Caretta caretta) in Italian seas. It established a sea turtle conservation network through
five new rescue centres located in national parks
and marine reserves, including on Asinara.

MEET THE GUARDIANS

conservation work.

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Inspiring change in the fishing community
“My name is Antonio Salis. I am a fisherman from Italy
and I have spent all of my adult life working in the seas
around Sardinia. When I was younger I remember there
were many sea turtles in our area. We would see them
regularly but they did not have any value to us as a
catch so we did not think too much about them.
My feelings about the turtles changed though about 30
years ago after I accidentally caught one on my fishing
lines. It had got hooked but apart from that it seemed
to be unhurt. I’ll never forget that day because I was
wondering what to do with the turtle and whether I
should take it home for its shell or if we could use its
meat. Then I looked into the turtle’s eyes and I had a
huge change of heart. I knew that I had to free such a
beautiful animal and that was the moment I think that
I became a true environmentalist.
So I was very glad to be asked to be involved with the
LIFE project, which was encouraging fisherman to take
greater care of turtles and providing advice about how
to rescue the animals if they were found in trouble.
Laura from the project together with her colleague Giuliano from the national park authority gave me some
extremely useful information about how best to make
sure we keep our turtle population safe here in this part
of Italy.

Turtle rescue techniques
I think one of [the project’s] most important benefits
was in raising awareness among younger generations
from the fishing community about why and how to help
the turtles. A handbook on different aspects of turtle
assistance was produced and LIFE also helped us in
other practical ways too, such as by paying for special
kits that could rescue injured turtles without causing
them additional harm.

These kits include
a net which we use
to protect the animals while taking
them to the Sea
Turtle
Recovery
Centre. In the past
I would normally
have used ropes
to bring injured
turtles on board
Antonio Salis
the boat; the nets
reduce stress for
turtles and I have seen how well they work. I am especially proud of the last turtle that I brought back to
Laura and Giuliano, because they named the animal
after my boat, Cristina. This was a great honour for
me personally!
When my son and I found Cristina we could see that
she was having problems with her breathing and she
looked in bad condition. We took her to the Tartanet
Centre and they discovered that she had swallowed
something bad which would have probably killed her
if we had not rescued her. Thankfully she survived
and I even got mentioned in the local newspaper
which was a new and nice experience for me.
We had a big celebration, the “Tarta Day”, when Cristina was released a couple of months later. I think the
more people know about turtle conservation work, the
better. I am very keen to tell people about what we
have done and what they can do to help the turtles.
I particularly like talking about the turtle protection
work with my friends and colleagues from the fishing boats. Our discussions have definitely made a difference in the way we act towards these wonderful
animals.”

d o n e

would cope with just one eye and one fin. We could not
find comparable cases in the veterinary literature and
we were advised to give him to a zoo. Of course we
wanted to avoid this so we spent a long time getting
him familiar with the sea again before we finally fully
released him. A small satellite tracker was attached to
him and this showed that he had survived because four
months later he was recorded in waters off the coast
of Tunisia.”
Many similar good news stories have occurred at
the recovery centre, including the significant example of a rare female green turtle (Cheloniamydas).
“Some bathers had found her on a beach,” recalls
Ms Pireddu. “Her hind leg was badly injured so we
were relieved when we learnt that it should recover
naturally given the right type of care. She was named
Green and we also attached a small tracking device
to monitor her recovery after her release. Unfortunately she still had some problems and the tracker
was helpful since we could identify her location and
bring her back to the centre to treat her for hypothermia. Happily, her second release into warmer waters
had better results.”

Developing a partnership with fishermen
Operations at the recovery centre began in September
2006 when the first turtle was brought in by a local fishing boat crew. Ms Denurra points out that, “More than
70% of the turtles we see are either recovered or reported by fishing crews. The relations we have now built
up with local fishing boats are really useful. Crews have
been given the information they need to help us save the
animals and because they are always at sea the fishing
boats provide us with a constant look out for turtles at
risk. We would not be able to be as effective as we are
without the fishing sector’s support.”

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“

“

V o i c e s

The communities here have
given us good support and
they like being part of the turtle
protection programme

Pierpaolo Congiatu, Director of the Asinara National Park
notes that previously, “the fishing community were quite
indifferent to turtles and it was unthinkable that a crew
who had caught a turtle in their nets would phone a conservation body to report this. Nowadays it happens often. So the project helped in changing their ways... they
increasingly recognise the turtle as an animal that they
can share the sea with.”

Communication outreach
A great deal of publicity and awareness raising work
was carried out during the LIFE project. In addition to
the aforementioned focus on fishing communities, this
information campaign also reached out to a wide audience of other local residents and businesses, plus a large

number of visitors. Schools were targeted and pupils received education in practical things to do if they found a
turtle in trouble.
Through its PR work, “the project has helped us in the
National Park Authority to gain close and strong support
from local citizens,” says Aldo Zanello, who is responsible
for marine resources in the Asinara National Park. “This
is appreciated and it makes life easier when local people
are on your side. The communities here have given us
good support and they like being part of the turtle protection programme.”
Pierpaolo Congiatu reinforces LIFE’s long-term benefits,
emphasising that, “previously turtles were a bit of a

myth but now they are real to people. The centre’s viewing areas
mean that everyone can now connect with turtles and this gives
them a greater interest in looking after the environment. We are
starting to build on this advantage through an expansion plan for
the recovery centre that will assist more turtles and lead to even
more public support for nature conservation.”
Project number: LIFE04 NAT/IT/000187
Title: Tartanet, a network for the conservation of
sea turtles in Italy
Beneficiary: Centro Turistico Studentesco e Giovanile (CTS)
Contact: Stefano Di Marco
Email: ambiente@cts.it

MEET THE GUARDIANS

Laura Pireddu agrees and recalls, “We did a lot of communication and awareness-raising activities with the
fishing boats from all over Sardinia. We would go to the
ports to talk to the crews in person. We also organised
some group meetings to explain the recovery centre’s
activities, promote the use of turtle-friendly fishing
hooks, and provide training in how to use protective nets
as well as equipment for removing obstructions caught
in turtles’ throats. This helped us to develop good links
with the fishing fleet. I think they feel involved in the
activities of the centre and through the LIFE project they
have become more sensitive about environmental issues” (see box).

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Helping a Rhine fisherman
achieve a lifelong dream
Rudi Hell celebrated his 75th birthday in January 2012 and has been fishing the Rhine for as long as he can
remember. Here he explains how LIFE has helped return a fish to the river he had not seen since childhood.

“I come from an old family of fishermen in Germany
and my ancestors have been fishing on the Lower
Rhine at Kalkar for more than 300 years. Both my
grandfather and my father were fishermen. They
taught me how to fish with nets and traps when I was
very small - so you could say that my fishing ‘craze’
has been with me almost since I was born.

Rudi Hell

Although I have not been directly involved with a LIFE
project, I have benefitted from LIFE funding which
helped to support the fishing community in the Lower
Rhine. This LIFE project has been important for me
because it has helped to make sure that people will
still be able to keep fishing on the Rhine in my part of
Germany.

THE PROJECT
Cooperation between French and German conservation bodies led to the breeding and successful
re-introduction of the protected fish species, allis
shad, into the Rhine basin in Germany.

As a boy I can remember how important the
Rhine’s fishery was for
local populations here.
Back then, salmon and
allis shad (Alosa alosa)
could be caught in large
numbers. Shad in particu-

lar were highly prized. News about good shad catches
would spread like wildfire through the neighbourhood,
spreading from one village to another. I recall how women from the villages would come running with baskets
to try and get the best of the shad from the nets.
Those were different days to now though and my life
as a fisherman has seen many changes in the numbers
of shad and other fish caught on the Rhine.

Pollution problems
We started to notice a difference soon after the war as
problems from water pollution began to rapidly alter the
size of fish stocks. By the 1960s and 70s, there were significantly fewer fish. We would frequently see dead fish
floating in the river and the water was often frothy with
a disgusting smell. People stopped eating local fish and
this had a major negative impact on the fisheries sector.
For example, one of my first jobs involved fishing, but as
the fish stocks dwindled and demand fell, I had to find
different work, so I became a bulldozer driver for a gravel
company - but I never stopped my fishing.

Fishing is ‘in my blood’ so I continued to find time to keep
fishing with creels (baskets) and nets on the Rhine, as well
in the backwaters and the numerous local lakes. Thankfully, things started to improve in the 1980s as more wastewater treatment plants were built to tackle the pollution
problems. As a result we started to catch fish again that
we had not seen for a very long time. These were fish that
I knew only from my childhood memories.

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Without the LIFE project it seems that the shad may not
have returned for a long time but now I am seeing more
and more young shad when I go out fishing these days.
The LIFE project manager, Dr. Andreas Scharbert, told me
that during the project they had introduced nearly five
million shad larvae into the Rhine river system.

Fishing science
For me I think that the people who spend a lot of time
fishing are in a good position to understand fish and the
fisheries. We may not consider ourselves as actual conservationists but we do know a lot about the fish and
what is needed to maintain good fish stocks. We know
that if we harm the fish stocks they cannot easily recover
on their own.
For instance, during my science fishing I see lots of eels
that have been injured by hydro energy turbines and I
doubt many of these will ever make it to the Sargasso
Sea to migrate. No wonder that these eels are now so
threatened.
My scientific fishing means that I get special permission
to use particular techniques to catch and monitor the
stocks of different species. This is how I heard about

the LIFE project. People from the university’s research
station had told me how the EU was helping to fund a
project that was bringing together fishing experts from
France and Germany to try to restock the Rhine with
shad. This sounded like a much needed and very welcome project to me.
We had not found shad in the Rhine for a long time so
the LIFE project was using shad that were still surviving
in French river systems. They took the larvae from adult
shad and then transported these to restock the Rhine.
Their approach was successful because one day while I
was out on my boat netting fish I looked down and I saw
the first wild shad that I had seen in decades.
At first I couldn’t believe my eyes, but I recognised it
straight away as a young shad. I remembered how popular they had been in the past and the sight of the young
shad bought back memories for me.
Having a young shad in my net was obviously a very
important catch so I phoned the university straight away.
They were all as delighted as I was that I had caught the
first ever reintroduced shad on the Rhine. We of course
were not just celebrating my personal catch but the fact
that the shad was now living again in the river and this
was a very positive sign for the Rhine’s future.

Dream come true
Our dream has come true now and we are waiting for the
next big step which will be when someone catches the first
adult shad after it has returned from its migration to the
sea. I look forward to that day a great deal.
This year I will be keeping a close look out to see if the
first adult shad has come back to spawn again. As a person with a lot of good memories of Rhine fisheries, and
someone with a lot of hope for the future of the river’s fish
stocks, the day that the first adult shad finds its way safely
back to this part of Germany will be a good day in my life.”

When I retired I was able to devote more of my time to
my fishing. I found that it was possible for me to use
the knowledge I had gained over the years to work with
researchers from the University of Cologne who were exploring ways to get the fish stocks back up to their natural levels. I have now been ‘fishing for science’ for quite
a few years and it is something I find very interesting.

I think that it is good the way that the EU has helped to
make this happen. I suspect without LIFE’s help to set
up the cooperation with the French, the ‘Maifischprojekt’
would have remained just a dream. Dr Scharbert was
very appreciative of the support he had received from
his French colleagues in the Gironde river area where the
shad larvae were born.

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Solving a biogas problem
Giuseppe Cazzani is a crop farmer in the Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy.
“I have a degree in Agronomy and I’ve been farming in the area of Medicina (Province of Bologna) in
Emilia-Romagna since I was young. This whole ‘adventure’ started before the LIFE Seq-Cure project. I
first became interested in the potential of biomass
crops – maize, triticale and sorghum - back in 2001,
through some German friends of mine. I went to visit
these friends in Germany to learn more about how to
set up a biogas plant on my own farm.
Giuseppe Cazzani

I was the first in the province of Bologna to do this
and being a pioneer meant we probably suffered in
the beginning, especially from a financial point-ofview. We had various choices to make but in the end,
we opted to go for a bigger plant – producing over 1
MW of electric power. Today, this choice seems justified as we are producing more than 2.8 MW (of electric power). We also decided to go for a larger-size
digestate tank – in retrospect this was another good
decision; as this has allowed us to produce more
high-quality fertiliser and has given us a competitive
advantage.
We started producing regular biogas that could be
sold on the energy grid in February 2008. In the beginning everything worked very well, but these plants
are very delicate from a biological point-of-view. So,
if you don’t know exactly how the plant should function, and you push it to produce more and more, it
can start to malfunction: It is a biological process a

THE PROJECT
Seq-Cure successfully demonstrated that it is
possible to implement three short production
chains for renewable energy by respecting as
much as possible sustainability criteria, while
enabling the optimisation of energy production
and increasing farmers’ incomes. The project established 13 demonstration energy farms where
various biomass crops were grown using different
organic waste residues.

bit like our own digestion system, so it all needs to
work perfectly, especially if you have to make it work
to the maximum of its efficiency to avoid eroding the
machinery.
At this time (i.e. in 2008) we got in contact with CRPA
SpA (LIFE project beneficiary) and we learnt that they
were carrying out the LIFE Seq-Cure project, whose
aim was to set up demonstration energy farms and
to analyse the potential of the biogas, wood fibre
and raw vegetable oil chains.
We agreed to participate as one of the (13) pilot energy farms. The beneficiary was very responsive to
our problems and followed us step-by-step, bringing
us through this biological ‘crisis’. Moreover, we worked
with them in order to optimise our yields.

The LIFE project helped us in providing all of the scientific
and practical assistance that we needed in order make
the plant produce more efficiently. Nowadays I don’t
make a move until I get CRPA’s advice. The collaboration
between us continues, even if it is not so intense any
more – thankfully! The aim is to prevent further problems so, whenever there is a doubt, we contact CRPA and
ask them for their advice.”
Project number: LIFE06 ENV/IT/000266
Title: Seq-Cure Integrated systems to enhance sequestration of carbon, producing energy crops by
using organic residues
Beneficiary: Centro Ricerche Produzioni Animali CRPA SpA.
Email: seq-cure@crpa.it

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Pig farming cleans up its act
Francisco Esteve is a pig farmer in the village of Peñarroya de Tastavins, located in the province of Teruel,
Region of Aragon, north-east Spain.

For the past eight or nine years I have also been mayor of my municipality, Peñarroya de Tastavins. As the
council of Peñarroya, we went to the regional government of Aragon to explain our problem and see what
solutions could be possible. Other localities faced the
same challenges but farmers were not speaking out
because they were clear that dealing with the challenge would mean greater costs and effort for them.

As I grew older, I started to help out; I got used to working with the animals and I enjoyed it. When I finished my
studies, I went to work on a farm to learn more about the
industry, then I made the step to doing everything myself.
When my father retired, I stopped breeding pigs and made
the switch to feeder-to-finish farming. Other people send
me piglets and I feed them up to 100 or 110 kg. When the
owner decides, the animal is sent to the slaughterhouse
and sold. I get paid a certain amount per pig.

An environmental challenge
I started to realise that we had a problem with pig slurry
in our municipality. We had about 40 000 pigs, but only
about 1 500 ha of useful arable land where we could
spread the slurry. What is more, at any one time, particularly between May to September, up to 80% of the land

Francisco Esteve

would already be cultivated; so all the slurry would be
tipped onto the remaining 20% of land. At times people
were just trying to get rid of the slurry any way they could.
The ground could not absorb all the nutrients, which
then drained off into the water courses. In rainy winters it was terrible. The river was filling with vegetation. Especially in the summer, when the water level
was low, it was green with algae. The smell in the
fields was also an issue. It was clearly environmentally unsustainable.

The Government of Aragon introduced us to SODEMASA – a public company that works to improve environmental management and sustainable development
in the region. They suggested applying for a LIFE programme. I didn’t know much about such European programmes, and when they
said how much co-fundTHE PROJECT
ing we needed to provide
it seemed impossible. But
The ES-WAMAR project has developed treatment
the engagement of the reprocesses and management systems for the envigional government made it
ronmentally friendly management of swine waste.
feasible.

MEET THE GUARDIANS

The existing environmental legislation was not able to
provide a solution for managing the pig slurry. If we
had suddenly enforced anti-pollution legislation then
we might all have been in prison! You need to show
people what they can do first and that it is affordable,
and then you can enforce the legislation.

“My parents kept pigs, so pig farming is something I’ve
known all my life. We probably had around 20 pigs in a
farrow-to-finish system where we bred and raised the pigs,
feeding them up to market weight. That’s how villages like
ours worked, with pens next to each house making use of
whatever land and space was available. My father took
other work as a labourer - whatever was available - but
the pig farming was an essential source of income for the
family.

“

V o i c e s

o f

These changes are essential if
pig farming is going to have
a future in a village like ours

A management solution

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Through the LIFE project we have introduced a management model for the slurry that demonstrates that it is possible to both avoid pollution and provide valuable fertiliser
to agricultural farmers. Through some fairly simple organisation you can treat the slurry in a plant or take it directly
to different areas where it is needed, reducing the nutrient
burden on small areas of land.
Here in Peñarroya, we [built] a treatment plant that separates slurry into liquid and solid waste so that the solid part
can be transported in a more concentrated form to farms,
thus reducing costs. We have also introduced pipelines so
that the slurry can be transported directly to the treatment
plant from some of the farms even more cheaply.
Through all these approaches we are aiming to make it
more affordable for farmers to deal with their pig-industry
waste more appropriately. This does not have to mean fining people - the various subsidies that are paid to farmers
could be made dependent on meeting waste management
criteria. You have to reward those that are making the effort to do things in the right way otherwise they end up
losing out.

Unforgettable experience
Through the project we have shown, for example, that
it is possible to manage 300 000 m3 of slurry per year
in Tauste and Maestrazgo just by setting up a management system to bring agreements between pig and
arable farmers. Everyone’s attitude has changed from

thinking that environmental concerns would be their
ruin, to seeing that everyone benefits. The arable farmers save lots of money on fertilisers that are as good if
not better than the ones they were buying before. The
pig farmers are seeing that the slurry can have a value
and that it doesn’t have to cost them lots of money to
dispose of it - and in some cases they can even make
some money from it.
The project was an unforgettable experience. I saw it from
the point of view of the farmer and of the mayor. The most
complicated part was convincing local people that we
needed to change the way that we operated and that we
would need to invest in these changes. But these changes
are essential if pig farming is going to have a future in a
village like ours.
I’m very happy with the progress we made. At times it
seemed almost impossible, when we saw some of the
costs and when we were still looking for solutions. The day
we inaugurated the treatment plant was a really special
day because we had been working hard for a long time and
now we were seeing the results!
Since the project we have worked to set up a biogas plant
so that we can sell electricity to subsidise the treatment of

the pig slurry and keep costs down for farmers. The idea
is to combine pig and olive waste to generate biogas, and
both solid and liquid fertilisers as before.
We have introduced standards for the sustainable application of pig slurry to the land. Analyses have already shown
that we have reduced the amount of nitrate pollution on
the farmland, but the problem is that the earth is still full
of the excess nitrates from the past, which continue to affect the surface water. It will take years for these nitrates
to return to their natural levels. Thanks to LIFE we have
hopefully turned the corner.”

Linking LIFE to the farm
on Anglesey and Lleyn
Dewi Jones has the task of linking farmers with a LIFE fens restoration project in North Wales.
becoming available. On the whole it’s worked well. The
problem we had this first season was we wanted to put
stock on there straight away. At least for next season we’ve
got more time and the farmers have got more time to select appropriate stock. Ideally we’d like to see some more
native [cattle] breeds: Welsh Blacks, things like that, which
are more able to graze in an area like this.

We’ve secured three contracts with the LIFE project: we’re
doing the grazing management and grazing husbandry and
we’re supplying the drivers for the cutting machine on the
fen; we’re also doing part of the small ground works - we’ve
been carrying the cut vegetation from here, supplying bog
mats and so on. We’ve given a lot of the cut material to
farmers for use as bedding for their stock. We’ve also carried a lot of stuff to a local farmer who is composting it.

I hadn’t worked with a nature conservation programme on
this scale before. It’s been an eye-opener, especially for
somebody who’s been through college doing agriculture,
where it’s all to do with meat production. You’re actually
using the animals to manage conservation rather than using the land to manage meat. It’s a very interesting project
- hopefully we’ll get some really good outcomes.

The grazing management is basically about finding graziers to come here: sorting out the contracts and acting as
the go-between between LIFE and the local farmers. It’s
been very well received in the area: the story’s got through
the grapevine and we’re getting more and more people
asking if there is any more grazing.
This year [2011] we’ve had five farmers involved. We’re
hoping for the 2012 season there’ll be more areas of land

It’s been easier to marry the demands of farmers and nature conservation than I expected. Once I’d accepted what
LIFE wanted out of it, it was easier then to get over to the
farmers and say ‘look, you’re getting this land free of charge
for grazing it but this is the way we want you to graze. And
you can only put X amount of cattle here and you’re going to
have to accept that they’re not going to fatten up as well as
they would at home’. A lot of them, rather than putting finishing cattle on here, have put cattle which have got maybe
another 12 months of growing time. They’re not going to finish them off here, but it’s a good place for younger stock just
to get them started. The ones that have been with stock here,
I think they are all surprised as to how well they have done
from what is actually here.”

THE PROJECT
The goal of the project is to restore EU Habitats Directive-listed alkaline and calcareous fens through
ground works followed by extensive grazing.
Project number: LIFE07 NAT/UK/000948
Title: Anglesey and Lleyn Fens
Beneficiary: Countryside Council for Wales
Contact: Justin Hanson
Email: j.hanson@ccw.gov.uk

MEET THE GUARDIANS

“I was born and bred on Anglesey. I studied agriculture
in Aberystwyth many years ago, worked as a dairy herd
manager, expanded from there to have my own animal
husbandry contracting business and then for the last 14
years I’ve been the joint manager of Cadwyn Cymru - Link
Wales: we’re a machinery ring, a farmer’s cooperative one of many throughout Europe.

Dewi Jones

80

5 MEET THE businesses
The LIFE programme has played an important role in stimulating the
private sector: helping new, nature and environment-friendly businesses
get off the ground; helping existing businesses develop innovative and
ecologically-sound products; and helping to â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;greenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; entire sectors of enterprise. Here are the stories of some of the people involved.

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Building the BASTA
Henrik Jansson is president of the Swedish Adhesive and Sealants Association. As end users of the database developed by the BASTA system, the association’s members have greatly benefitted from the work
of this LIFE Environment project that ran from 2003 to 2006.
Henrik Jansson

We sat together with the entrepreneurs of the big four
[paints and adhesives] manufacturing companies in Sweden – Alcro-Beckers, Bostik, Akzo Nobel Byggrim and Akzo
Nobel Decorative Coatings –and said: ‘Look we’ve got to
do something to sort this mess out’. We tried to find some
kind of common solution. We didn’t want to go looking into

THE PROJECT
The project successfully set up the BASTA system,
a pre-cursor of REACH that has helped speed
up the phasing out of hazardous substances in
construction.
specific substances; we more wanted to look at the intrinsic
properties of the substances in order to capture everything.
The LIFE project gave the initiative a well-needed boost.
It’s always difficult when you try to be self sustained, but
LIFE funding was enough to give it a fresh start. The buyers
know that when they get a BASTA product, it will not contain anything that has proven to be carcinogenic or toxic.
This is accepted by every stakeholder in Sweden now. We
have established a steering committee and this would not
have been possible without the LIFE project.
When I first became involved in 2001-2002, I was tasked
with going to the chemical authorities in Sweden and getting a feeling for what they thought about it. And their first
comment was that it was a forerunner to REACH…we like it:
go ahead. It takes the same basic principle of meeting the
demand for more knowledge about the product: the basic
demand of the companies is that you should have good
knowledge of your products, you should know what you

put in it, you should have good procedures for handling the
paperwork and you should have a good relationship with
your suppliers.
When the LIFE project happened, you could see BASTA
take off. It’s always a question of funding and trying to get
everything together, but LIFE gave it more of a steering
push. Now it’s flying on its own. It has a steady budget; it’s
working fine.
For us [Swedish Adhesive and Sealants Association] it was
really a chance to excel and show the purchaser, our customers, that we are serious, we are working hard to provide the best products. The industry has gone from using
lots of volatile organic compounds in adhesives to more
water and that goes for paints and lacquers too. We try to
be one step ahead of the customers’ demands - to be on
the technological forefront providing good quality environmentally sound products in the market.”
Project number: LIFE03 ENV/S/000594
Title: BASTA – Phasing out very dangerous substances from the construction industry
Beneficiary: NCC Construction Sverige AB
Contact: Johanna Fredén
Email: johanna.freden@ivl.se

MEET THE BUSINESSES

“The situation in the late 1990s/early 2000s was quite
horrendous. Every stakeholder [in the construction industry] had their own blacklist or database of substances that
they didn’t want to see in building products. As a result,
manufacturers had to adapt to a number of different
blacklists and systems in order to survive. It was difficult
for them to sometimes be persistent in environmental
work, because they didn’t know which way they should go.

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Cooling off the greenhouse gases
Jørgen Modvig is technical manager of REMA 1000 (a chain of supermarkets in Denmark). Mr Modvig’s employer trialled the use of trans-critical carbon dioxide refrigeration systems as part of the
LIFE CO2REF project.

Jørgen Modvig

“In 2007 cooling equipment based on hydroflurocarbon
(HFC) gases was banned in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. We didn’t know what we had to do when we opened
a new store. Companies had different solutions, but they
weren’t so good. So therefore we were very interested
in participating in the project because it would speed up
the search for an alternative, and there the LIFE pro-

ject had great value for my company. We could make
a trans-critical plant two years earlier than if we had
done nothing.
Today all major producers of cooling equipment all over
Europe can make trans-critical equipment, but they
couldn’t in 2007. The LIFE project initiated a new compa-

ny called Advansor, with Kim Christiansen, a former employee with the Danish Technological Institute. He used
his experience from the project to start his own company
and now he’s selling a lot of trans-critical systems in the
UK, among other countries. Cisco is buying a lot of his
equipment, and Danfoss, which makes valves, produced
a complete unit that it could sell afterwards.
At the start of the project, there were no alternatives to
HFCs because there were no compressors and valves that
could manage the high pressure. During the development
process, Danfoss (project partner) needed a store to test the
new system [Rema 1000 came on board]. You can test a lot
in a laboratory but in the real world things happen. I took a
chance, because when you have customers visiting a store it
must be operational 24 hours every day. There’s no place for
error, and we took a big risk.

THE PROJECT
The CO2REF project demonstrated the environmental and commercial benefits of trans-critical
CO2 refrigeration systems for use in supermarkets and similar areas. The project designed an
optimised CO2-based system, which was tested in
a REMA 1000 supermarket store.

It cost a lot of money because it didn’t operate
perfectly from the start.
We tried it in one store and
tested for a year. The compressors overheated and
the tubes couldn’t manage
the pressure – they exploded. The safety valve opened

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“

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The EU funding for
our project speeded up
the development process

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and the CO2 got out. The EU funding for our project, however,
speeded up the development process. If we hadn’t got the
funding, it would have taken two or three years longer to get
a trans-critical plant that was operational.

Towards greater energy efficiency
The project was interesting because no one had done it
before. Some other companies were half a year behind
us. It’s always interesting to develop new equipment and
it was an exciting process to participate in. I attended
a lot of meetings in Aarhus Technological Institute with
a lot of engineers. At the beginning I didn’t understand
what they were talking about. I’m not an engineer, but it
was my responsibility to make sure that we could open
the store at the time when the building was finished and
you can’t open it without a cooling system.

We are looking at using LED lighting in our stores instead of traditional lighting, but for the time being it’s
too expensive. But you can use LED in signs, and there
you have a great value because they last longer. You

have 40 000 hours in LED lighting. In traditional lighting
you have 10 000-20 000 hours. We are always looking
at new technologies. When I buy something for my company it must be energy efficient because energy prices
are going up and up.
I have children, and we have to make sure that they have
the same opportunities growing up that we had. But every time I see the LIFE sign, I think positively, because
the EU is making a difference. It’s supporting projects all
over Europe. We won a prize and went to Brussels for the
awards ceremony, and the variety of the projects was

impressive. When I hear about a project, I always think,
“Where’s the value?” But afterwards I think, “Of course, in
this area, in this region, it makes sense – not in the short
term but in the long term.”
Project number: LIFE05 ENV/DK/000156
Title: CO2REF – Development and demonstration of
a prototype transcritical CO2 refrigeration system
Beneficiary: Knudsen Koling
Contact: Torben Olsen
Email: torben.olsen@knudsenkoling.dk

MEET THE BUSINESSES

The incentives were commercial. It’s most cost-efficient
[using the new system]; we save energy – approximately
20%. In a cold summer, we save more energy. Energy
consumption is much higher in the summer than in the
winter. The time period where we had an advantage was
very short. We were a year ahead of our main competitors. It has been routine in new stores since 2009 for all
major companies to use trans-critical cooling equipment.

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Distributing healthy food
without causing harm
Gianni Bonora is managing director of CPR System, the beneficiary of the LIFE Usa e riusa (“Use and reuse”)
project. The goal of the project, which ran from 1999 to 2002 was to promote environmentally-friendly
fruit and vegetable distribution in Italy through the use and reuse of recyclable boxes for packaging.

Gianni Bonora

CPR System is “an Italian company which is proud of its
commitment to the environment,” says managing director Gianni Bonora. “We are part of the nation’s large
fruit and vegetable distribution chain. Our respect for
nature thus not only comes from our hearts, but it also

makes good business sense, because the raw materials for our work here at CPR System rely heavily on a
healthy environment.”
The firm’s commitment to the environment is evident in
the beautifully landscaped gardens of its premises. Such
a sight is rare in most industrial areas but Mr Bonora’s
company has strong green credentials, and these received
a boost through being a beneficiary of a LIFE project promoting sustainable approaches to waste management.

“We work with a wide range of businesses in the fruit
and vegetable sector,
providing technical supTHE PROJECT
port and guidance”, exUse and … re-use developed an innovative system
plains Mr Bonora. “We
to avoid the substantial amounts of waste generwere aware that a great
ated in the packaging of fruit and vegetables. The
deal of disposable packproject designed recyclable plastic boxes, which
aging products were used
can be folded and re-used up to 30 times. The
in the sector and, for
scheme included a processing centre to handle
both environmental and
the cleaning, re-use and recycling of the boxes,
economic reasons, we
and computer software to track their journeys.
wanted to try to find a

suitable solution for reducing the amount of single-use
packaging that was thrown away.”

A reusable response
A solution was identified that involved reusable plastic
packaging boxes. “The physical system was quite simple, involving the introduction of new packaging lines. My
main challenge however lay in persuading people that
the new environmentally sensitive technology was worth
their while participating in”, explains Mr Bonora.
“Communication therefore proved to be an extremely important tool for us and the LIFE project helped us get our
message across to the people that mattered in our supply and distribution chain. We explained that replacing a
disposable system with a reusable plastic system could
help save energy, reduce waste management requirements and most crucially it could cut up to €150 off the
costs of distributing each tonne of fruit or vegetables.”
Despite such potential positives, Mr Bonora’s partners in
the distribution network, as well as his Board of Direc-

“Having said that though, I remember there were still
quite a few people who were surprised that LIFE had
agreed to help us make the shift to minimise our environment impact. In fact, to tell the truth, I think some of
my Board were a bit terrified at the fact that we would
have to make the shift once the funding was confirmed.
I was even scolded for winning the funding by some
people, but I guess fears like this are natural in such a
situation and every business person can experience such
cautionary thoughts when embarking on a change.”

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[Support from LIFE] gave
the project a kind of credibility
and momentum that might have
been much more difficult to
achieve otherwise

Behavioural change
“Communication was the key to our success in changing people’s behaviour to use the more environmentally
friendly packaging system. Ever since I was a child, which
was some time ago now that I have turned 63 years old,
I always believed in the power of communication. For me
it is rarely sufficient to just be good in what you do, you
also have to know how to communicate well.”

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Based on these principles, the LIFE beneficiary took a
prudent look to see how it should implement an effective
communication campaign. “We focused on highlighting
the cost savings and this seemed to be very helpful.
Money is often the most vital factor in business people’s environmental decisions. Hence we invested a lot
of time in explaining the fact that if more people and
companies got involved, the greater the savings could
be because the overall operation would become more
cost effective.
“We knew that asking competitors to work
collectively would probably not be straightforward, as they are often more tuned to
spar with each other rather than cooperate,
but we managed to find a way to get people
talking. Our technique was to bring everyone
together so they could all know they were all
being told the same thing ‘in their own language’ and that they could all hear each others’ points of view. This approach was very,
very useful. It was a winning method for us.
It meant we could all understand the ‘bigger
picture’ and we all identified together the
things that we had in common which needed
to be addressed.”
Mr Bonora stresses how, “listening was one
of the most important skills that we used
during these meetings. I certainly learnt how
beneficial just listening can be. The LIFE project was a good school for this and the lessons that I learnt from my time with LIFE
have stayed with me. Today I make a point
of opening my ears to listen to other peoples’ ideas and perspectives. I still find this
is particularly useful for me during my board
meetings.”

MEET THE BUSINESSES

tors, were not automatically convinced that they should
switch to the new system. “The LIFE funds provided an
incentive that helped overcome some of these barriers.
I think that because we received support from the EU
through LIFE it gave the project a kind of credibility and
momentum that might have been much more difficult to
achieve otherwise. People saw that if LIFE believed in the
project then it was not just a crazy environmental idea.

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Success story

instance, soon we will be moving to provide services for charcuterie and dairy businesses. We
are already expanding towards the meat sector and we use the different coloured boxes for
different types of products.

The board of CPR System is now fully supportive
of the switch to the reuseable packaging system
and they can see that it has been a success.

“Alongside these growth plans we also want to
venture into new countries. Our intention is not
to try and colonise Europe but we want to try
and find partners from other countries that can
do business with us using the same environmentally-friendly distribution systems.”

“In 1998, we were nine founding members of
CPR System who each invested half a million
lira, which is equivalent to about €250, in getting our company started. The company’s capital
value is now around €25 million and we feel sure
that LIFE’s €0.5 million grant made a big difference
in helping us,” observes Mr Bonora.
“At the start of the LIFE project we had nearly 50 companies involved along the supply and distribution chain.
This has now increased to over 950. The first processing centre working with the new re-useable packaging
was built in Gallo (Ferrara), after which we were able to
expand our coverage throughout Italy. Some 15 different food processing and packaging centres across the
country are using the re-useable boxes that LIFE helped
to introduce.”
He points to further benefits that the work started
by LIFE is delivering over
time. “More people are realising that we were telling
the truth when we said we
could save them money
by re-using boxes. They
can see that we are able
to help them reduce their
running costs and many
are pleasantly surprised
because they never believed that could happen.”

Mr Bonora looks back on the achievements of the LIFE
project as “very satisfying and very encouraging for the
environmental challenges faced here in Italy. I believe
that we made the right decision to start on our ‘adventure’ and I can say that it was a good one which has
made everyone involved happy in the end. LIFE was
definitely instrumental in making the success happen.
Without the EU funding we would not have been able to
afford to dream of achieving so many ambitious results,
but the combination of LIFE’s financial assistance and
moral support made the project happen.”

Expansion plans
Taking a walk around the CPR System premises, Mr Bonora points out that the company now use different coloured plastic crates. “CPR System’s successes in Italy’s
fruit and vegetable sector have encouraged us to think
that there may be new green business opportunities for
us in other sectors, as well as other countries too. For

Mr Bonora credits LIFE with helping his business deliver a lot of know-how in a specialist area and is happy
to share this positive experience more widely. “We tell
other companies about how LIFE has helped us and we
are pleased to keep the LIFE logo on our delivery vehicles. People tend to forget their origins. I will always
remember that the origins of the CPR System project
was the LIFE project and that’s why we continue using
the logo on all of our trucks.”
Mr Bonora concludes by saying that “LIFE has helped us
reduce our impact on the environment. This has been
good for both our hearts and our bank balances. I absolutely hope that LIFE will continue for another 20 years
in order that more people can benefit and learn from its
achievements.”
Project number: LIFE99 ENV/IT/000034
Title: Usa e riusa – Use and...reuse. The processing
centre in the logistics of packaging of fresh fruit
and vegetable products
Beneficiary: CPR System
Contact: Marco Salvi
Email: cprsystem@csoservizi.com

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A breakthrough ‘biotyre’
European manufacturers are increasingly aware that greater resource efficiencies can bring economic as
well as environmental gains. Giulia Gregori and colleagues at Italian bioplastics company, Novamont, were
at the heart of an innovative partnership project to develop greener materials for tyres.
Giulia Gregori

Coordinated by tyre manufacturer, Goodyear (the project
beneficiary – see box), Ms Gregori explains that Novamont’s
main role in the 2005 to 2009 LIFE BioTyre project was
to produce a biofiller that could be used to produce tyres
with less rolling resistance, greater durability and a reduced
braking distance. The project partner also evaluated the
dispersal properties required when designing a tyre and
analysed the product’s environmental impact.
Extremely enthusiastic about the “LIFE experience”, Ms
Gregori says the BioTyre project provided her and her colleagues with the opportunity to “perfect, implement and
demonstrate” the biofiller. “[It] accelerated the production
and dissemination of the positive results to other companies, who are now showing interest in the product.” From a
more personal point of view, she reflects that involvement
in the project provided a sense of being part of a network,
of belonging to a larger community. The LIFE project enabled collaboration with partners across Europe, the creation of durable partnerships and a feeling of being “part of
something bigger”, particularly when participating in Green

THE PROJECT
Coordinated by Goodyear Luxembourg, the
partnership LIFE BioTyre project had three main
components. Firstly, it developed an alternative to
traditional non-renewable fillers used in tyres for
their reinforcement properties; secondly it analysed and modified the tyre structure to minimise
energy loss through rolling resistance when in
motion; and finally it optimised the tyre structure
for the development of new tyres.
Week in Brussels in 2011, which generated interest in the
project and useful business contacts. “Being part of the project made us understand the importance of such an event,”
she believes.
Ms Gregori and colleagues are continuing their work on the
greening of products for the chemical industry. Novamont’s
biodegradable bio plastics and bio lubricants are one outcome of this research. “The LIFE project has also been beneficial in opening us up to new possibilities and synergies
for future projects”, says Ms Gregori.
Finally, commenting on the 20th anniversary of the LIFE
programme, Ms Gregori hopes that projects can continue to
be pioneers of good practices and that the programme will

continue to support projects targeting “waste as a valuable
resource” and encouraging environmentally responsible behaviour among Europe’s citizens. “The richness of Europe’s
territory and its competitiveness can only be preserved if all
stakeholders (companies, the academic world, public institutions and citizens) act responsibly over the long term in
promoting processes and innovations with a low environmental impact,” she believes.
Project number: LIFE06 ENV/L/000118
Title: Development and validation of ultra low rolling resistance tyres with environmentally friendly
resources
Beneficiary: Goodyear Luxembourg SA
Contact: Georges Thielen
Email: georges.thielen@goodyear.com

MEET THE BUSINESSES

Giulia Gregori is responsible for R&D strategic projects at
Novamont – a position she has held for the past 10 years.
She explains that the company began work into reducing
the polluting materials used in the production of tyres –
whilst also improving their performance – in 1995.

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Research and reuse of winery
‘wastes’ continues to grow
Serkos Haroutounian is Professor of Chemistry at the Agicultural University of Athens. The research he led
into reuse of winery wastes for the LIFE Dionysos project promises to deliver new business opportunities for
winemakers across the EU.

Serkos Haroutounian

“My main research interest concerns the exploitation of
plant derived natural products as a rich source of bioactive molecules and extracts that may be used by pharmaceutical or cosmetic industries as raw materials, or
as food supplements. I’m also involved in research about
the reuse of agro-industrial wastes.
I worked for three years as the project manager of
the LIFE Dionysos project with partners the Univer-

THE PROJECT
The Dionysos project successfully developed
an economically feasible and environmentally
friendly process for the integrated management of the waste generated by the winemaking
industry. Specifically, the project demonstrated at
a pilot-plant scale, technology for processing of
winery solid waste to enable the recovery of high
added-value polyphenols and to enable the use
of the remaining waste for the production of high
nutritional value animal food or natural organic
fertiliser.

sity of Athens (department of Pharmacy), the Goulandris Natural History Museum and Terra Nova, an
environmental consulting firm.

extracts in connection with numerous scientific reports on
the significant antioxidant properties of grapes and wines
polyphenols.

The AUA chemistry laboratory team during the LIFE project consisted of me and four young scientists (mainly
PhD students). The driving force of our involvement was
the growing scientific interest and public demand for the
production of potent natural antioxidant compounds or

It is well known that during the winemaking process a significant amount of solid waste, accounting the 15% of the
total grape biomass, is generated (grape pomace). Only a
small fraction of this waste is processed or used for activities of limited economic interest such as the production of
ethanol, alcoholic drinks, seed oil and dietary fibre. The remaining biomass is usually disposed of onto nearby open
land, without any prior treatment. The large volume and
increased organic (polyphenolic) load of this waste material, which is phytotoxic and toxic for aquatic organisms,
constitute significant environmental pollution problems,
especially for surface and groundwater in the areas where
they are being dumped. In Greece, every year we process
around 550 000 tonnes of grapes and produce more than
120 000 tonnes of waste.
We were intrigued by the possibility of exploiting this
grape pomace as a rich source for the recovery of
high added-value natural polyphenols (or their ex-

tracts), because most grape polyphenols remain in
the pomace. This activity combines the profitable
venture with a significant advance in environmental
protection around the wine-producing zones.

Money-making opportunities
One of our main interests with the LIFE project was to
demonstrate that someone can make money by processing this waste in an efficient, practical and environmentally
friendly manner. Winemaking is an activity that occurs in
most areas of Europe, so it’s a problem and opportunity
for everyone.
One of our main achievements is the continuing – and
growing – interest about the project. This is something that
I never imagined: more than four years after the end of
the project, I’m busier than ever with enquiries about our
research. For example, I still get a lot of emails from people
asking me for details. I’ve sent the feasibility study and
the layman’s report to more than 20 different interested
companies from all around Europe. Of course, there’s a lot
of interest in Greece. Just two weeks ago there was an
event about the project results held in northern Greece,
while within the next two weeks I will present the project’s
findings to a cooperative of wine producers interested in
investing in this wineries waste management process.

LIFE experiences
Looking back at my LIFE project experiences, there are
three things that I would like to highlight. Firstly, during

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the three years of the project implementation a technology was produced that is currently applied by some
companies for the recovery of the high added-value
wine polyphenols/extracts from this waste material and
the production of marketable products. For example, in
northern Greece a company is producing flour and other
bakery products enriched with wine polyphenolic extracts
(recovered from wineries wastes). The plan is to expand
this business to dairy products and to produce yoghurt
containing extracts of wine polyphenols. Also, there are
some cosmetic companies using these extracts. For example, a new beauty cream is currently being tested.
Finally, some wineries produce compost in the manner
developed during the project and use it for the production of organic wines.
Secondly, the solution developed is really attractive,
since is technically simple, transferable and applicable
everywhere. The investment cost is low and therefore
adaptable by most wineries (mainly SMEs). It is also important to point out that the whole process is 100% environmentally safe, since only water and alcohol (which
are fully recycled) are used for the recovery of polyphenols and there are no emissions to the environment.
Thirdly, a very positive achievement concerns the continuation of this research by young scientists to transfer/
apply the waste management technology to other agroindustrial wastes, e.g. from the peach and tomato processing industries. The final goal is the development of
an economically feasible and environmentally friendly
process for the recovery of high added-value bioactive
natural compounds or extracts.
I don’t know why the project was so successful. Maybe
because it’s about wine and health, issues that interest
and affect many people…. I must underline, however,
that a very special ingredient was the interaction with

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the LIFE people. They really inspired and supported us
throughout the project implementation, offering solutions and advice. I’ve been involved in various projects,
funded by other European or Greek authorities, and I can
say that the LIFE programme works in an ideal way; it’s
well thought out, functions well and the rules are very
clear. We also had very good support from the monitoring team and the LIFE Unit.
This [project] was just the beginning. Now we are working with grape stems that are also considered as wine
‘wastes’. We have already obtained some interesting
scientific results on their polyphenolic content, biological properties (as antioxidants and angiogenesis inhibitors in cancer prevention) and potential application for
the production of food supplements.”

The brewer: A toast
to nature conservation
Whilst many conservationists appreciate the restorative properties of a good beer, especially after a hard
day in the field, for Dirk Geysels and colleagues at the Liereman nature reserve in Belgium, the link between
nature conservation and beer has taken on a whole new significance.
“It all started in 1995,” recalls Dirk, a volunteer at the reserve for over 27 years. “At the time, we were developing
the visitors’ centre and we were looking for something
that would make the experience more interesting and
memorable. Being Belgian, I guess it was inevitable that

the discussion would eventually come around to beer. In
fact one of our colleagues, whose father was a brewer,
suggested the idea; that we brew our own beer and sell
it on-site.”

Photo: Lenneke Schot, Biojournaal

Although not all the members of the conservation group
were immediately convinced, Dirk and four other volunteers liked the idea and decided to take it further. “We
thought it could be fun, and a good way to generate
some revenue for the reserve, but we felt it was important that there should be a strong link between the beer
and the local environment.”

Dirk Geysels (right) and colleagues

The first step was to enlist the help of a local brewer
and to try out some different recipes. After some very
thorough tasting sessions, which Dirk concedes, “probably went on a bit longer than necessary,” they finally
narrowed it down to three options. At this stage a close
group of friends and family were drafted in to help with
the final selection. “We organised a blind tasting and the
result was very clear: over 90% of those who participated favoured the beer we had colour coded red, and
which we later named Gageleer.”

The name Gageleer comes from the Flemish word for
bog myrtle (gagel), an indigenous plant that grows
throughout the reserve and a key ingredient in the beer.
“It gives the beer a very distinctive flavour but you have
to know which part of the plant to use and how much,”
says Dirk, with a twinkle in his eye.

THE PROJECT
The LIFE Liereman project involved the restoration of the ‘Landschap De Liereman’, a nature
reserve situated in the north of Antwerp Province.
The project succeeded in purchasing and carrying
out restoration work on 141 ha of land. It also
secured the engagement of local stakeholders
in drawing up a coherent management plan that
has enabled ongoing preservation of the target
heathland habitats. A key aspect of the project
was to explore opportunities to develop the economic potential of the reserve, including through
the production and sale of beer, using ingredients
harvested sustainably on site.

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New developments are also underway in the sourcing of
ingredients. Gageleer is brewed using only natural, organic ingredients. However, at present the organic hops
have to be imported from New Zealand and the grain
comes from a major supplier based near Antwerp. But
Dirk has plans to produce both crops locally. Discussion

91

Photo: Lenneke Schot, Biojournaal

with local farmers has already led to contracts for the
supply of organic barley. In 2011, a total of 7 ha was
planted, producing over 30 tonnes of organic barley, but
Dirk hopes to increase this significantly in the coming
years.
“We would need around 120 ha to supply enough barley for our current production, so we are talking to more
farmers about getting involved. This is a win, win, win
situation: firstly, we get a local supply of organic barley, which further strengthens the narrative of the Gageleer; secondly, the farmers get a better price for their
crops; and thirdly, the conversion of more and more land
around the reserve to organic farming also contributes
to the goal of nature conservation.”
But the good news does not end there: the success of
Gageleer has also created an important new revenue
stream for the Liereman nature reserve, which receives
a minimum of 2 euro cents from the sale of every bottle.

“

Beer and brewing may
not be synonymous with
nature conservation, but
the financial and other
benefits for the Liereman
nature reserve have gone
a long way towards convincing those who were
initially sceptical, of the merits of Gageleer. “In the beginning there were a lot of people who objected to the
idea; they felt our business was nature conservation and
not brewing, which they saw as a distraction. But things
have changed since then. More people now recognise
that public subsidies cannot be relied on forever and we
have to take more responsibility for our own future. As a
result, we now have more people in favour than against.”

This is becoming an important
source of income for the reserve,
which we hope to continue to grow
in the future

In the first year, total production came to around
5 000 litres, all of which was sold on-site, in the small
bar in the visitor’s centre. Today, annual production has
increased to over 100 000 litres, which is sold throughout Belgium, as well as in the Netherlands, France, Sweden, Denmark, Italy, the UK and even the USA.

But this story is only beginning, with Dirk and his colleagues busy planning what they hope will be some
major new developments. “We’re currently speaking to
some other local breweries, one (of) which also has a
social objective. We have a project in mind, but I can’t
say too much about it for now, I don’t want the big breweries to know about our plans,” says Dirk, checking over
his shoulder. “But if it comes to fruition it will be big. It
might even be part of the LIFE+ bid we are currently
putting together.”

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“This is becoming an important source of income for
the reserve, which we hope to continue to grow in
the future, but we have to get the right balance
between conservation and reinvesting in the
business. To date, the emphasis has probably
been too much on the former. In fact, one year
we gave so much to the reserve that we ended
up making a loss, so our accountant wasn’t too
happy. This is mainly why we have now set a
minimum fixed contribution per bottle. If at the
end of the year we make a profit, we can also supplement this.”

The five friends established a cooperative and between them they invested €30 000 in the fledgling business. “This was just about enough to pay
for the first brews, and for the bottling, packaging and other set-up costs. Rather than brewing
ourselves, we decided to use the services of the
contract brewer, Proefbrouwerij. This avoided the
need for major up-front investment and made
the whole venture more feasible.”

“In the US, a very interesting opportunity has opened up
in California. I guess this is the home of the hippy and it
seems that they like our story.”

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LIFE marks ‘turning point’
for rural tourism in Latvia
Asnate Ziemele is President of the Latvian Country Tourism Association and of the tour operator, Baltic
Country Holidays.
“I am one of the founders of the Latvian Country Tourism
Association, which was started in 1993 to promote rural
tourism in Latvia. I was also the project manager of the
LIFE Green Certificate project, started by the association
in 2000, to promote sustainable rural tourism.
Asnate Ziemele

I was elected president in 1993, and I’ve been re-elected every four years since. So you could say I’m a kind of
‘mother’ to the association, which started shortly after the
Soviet Union broke up (Latvia attained full independence
from the U.S.S.R. in 1991).

Rural tourism didn’t exist at all at this time, as during the
Soviet times there was no-one really going on holiday to
the countryside. However, we knew that it was becoming
quite popular in western European countries. So we started
the association to involve
all those people living in
THE PROJECT
rural areas who had spare
The Green Certificate project developed the ‘Green
rooms. The tour operator,
Certificate’ environmental quality eco-label for tourBaltic Country Holidays, a
ism establishments in Latvia and then applied it to
Limited company (owned
a number of small rural tourism providers (mainly
by the association), was
small businesses offering accommodation). A ‘Green
launched in 1998 to handle
Holidays’ brand was also developed and promoted.
the holiday reservations.

No phones
It’s quite funny when I look back and compare the situation today with how it was back then. When we started
we were really very naïve. And it was not easy from a
practical point-of-view. On the other hand, people were
very open and willing to do something new in the countryside. Few of us had telephones, so, in order to contact

the accommodation owners we had to leave messages
with the local post office, or shop.
The business started with farmers. It was mainly bed and
breakfast-style accommodation. Self-catering cottages
didn’t really exist, because there really weren’t any empty
buildings in the countryside. The first members of the association joined in 1994. Today we unite more than 300

The idea of the LIFE project came at a time when in our
(eastern European) countries, the concept of ‘sustainability’
– sorting garbage, saving electricity or water, promoting local values and the values of nature protection etc – was really something new and it was not popular. We understood,
however, that it was one of our strengths in the countryside
and especially in terms of rural tourism.
We developed the project ourselves, that is, we never had
any consultants writing and submitting projects on our behalf. I think this is one of its main strengths and the reason
for its continued success: When we finished the project in
2004, we had 54 green certificate holders. These are mainly small businesses with accommodation. Now we have 75,
which means that around 10% of all accommodation providers in the countryside are really green-thinking.
Generally speaking the certificate was, and is, logical for
rural tourism establishments – the main challenge was to
persuade the providers to get into the ideas and put more
energy into resource-saving and promoting the local cultural heritage etc.
For the main part, the providers are very positive and believe we are doing a good job and that this is our strength.
We try to be honest with them and to tell them exactly what
we think. We told them this is not just a European project,
but it is the ideology of the rural tourist. And those who
get the green certificate are only the best ones, who have
understood the message.

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Something we’re really proud
to have achieved is that the certificate
developed under LIFE has today
become the national eco-label
for rural tourism outlets

Sense of pride

Importantly, this message is also supported by the Ministry
of the Environment. Something we’re really proud to have
achieved is that the certificate developed under LIFE has
today become the national eco-label for rural tourism outlets. Moreover, the Minister visits each newly
labelled establishment. This is very much appreciated
by the certificate holders. Also, the fact that this is
continuing afterwards is the true confirmation that
the project was correct - needed not only for us, as
the project developers, but for the rural communities.
The LIFE project was a turning point for rural tourism in
Latvia and also for many other countries that have followed what we did. It was more than just the creation
of the green certificate; it was an initiator of sustainable
tourism. At that time, no-one believed that it could work.
But the LIFE programme listened to us and believed in
what we could do.
Comparing our society with, for example, the UK or Germany, the understanding of green issues is less developed. It’s a step-by-step advance. You’re talking about a
society where a large proportion can hardly afford a vacation at all. So price is the first choice when people are
selecting their holidays. However, when visitors are in the
countryside, they like what they see around them and
then they start to understand and appreciate more the

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importance of saving water or electricity and of sorting and managing their
waste.
One of my main pieces of advice is
that communication is actually the
key to everything. And if the communication is correctly done, we find
most of our visitors are happy to follow the greening advice promoted by
the small businesses. But if the communication about sustainability is wrong, or
doesn’t work for the businesses in the protected areas, or just those who are influencing
the environment and nature, then it will also go
wrong for the customers and travellers. Communication (messages) about greening issues should be simple, close to reality and economically viable.
One thing we did under the LIFE project that was particularly successful was to use a series of cartoons to illustrate some of the environmentally friendly practices in
the tourism accommodation. We gave our greening ideas
to the artist Romāns Vitkovskis and then he interpreted
them (see p. 92). This has really worked; so much so that
we recently ordered some more to cover some other
topics such as for the outdoor activities (e.g. boating,
cycling). The tourists love them - they’re really funny
- and, of course, when you look at the cartoons, you
understand the message. It says so much more than
just ‘green advice’”.
Project number: LIFE00 ENV/LV/000959
Title: Green Certificate – Development of the criteria for the Green Certificate, implementation and
control in rural areas and small towns in Latvia
Contact: Asnate Ziemele
Email: asnate@celotajs

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small businesses throughout Latvia. They pay an annual
fee and receive a variety of assistance, such as help with
marketing or with the creation of the ‘green certificate’
–environmental quality eco-label for tourism establishments – that was started under the LIFE project.

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Restoring national pride
in North Karelia

Photo: Markku Tano

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LIFE actions in Finland’s Koli National Park are inspiring new business opportunities. Here we meet two

Photo: Markku Tano

entrepreneurs that have benefitted.

Irja Tanskanen

Irja Tanskanen is the owner of a local guided tour
company
“I was born in the Koli national park area in North Karelia,
Finland. My partner and I are local entrepreneurs and own
Koli Activ Oy (www.koliactiv.fi), a company that organises
trips and provides tourist services in the park. I have been
providing guided tours and snow-walking/hiking services for
more than 15 years.
Before the LIFE to Koli project we had no nature trails and
people had almost no information on the park´s ecology,

Ilkka Aula runs nature training for schools and
team-building exercises
“My wife and I moved last June (2011)
from Helsinki to Koli. We wanted to start a
new life closer to nature. And we decided
to set up nature training for schools and
leadership and team-building courses using the nature around us (www.elontila.fi).
We rented the cottage for our guests just
where one of the LIFE trails starts, so we

are directly benefiting from the project.
And, of course, I try to explain the project
to our guests and schools. The restored
forests are just behind the house, and
Metsähalllitus (the park authority) will
carry out a slash-and-burn next year. I am
really proud to be able to show the site to
my guests.”

THE PROJECT
The LIFE to Koli project implemented long-term
management plans for the boreal forest, bog
woodlands, herb-rich forests, as well as reintroducing the practice of slash-and-burn and the
management of semi-natural grasslands. Some
107 ha of cultivated forests were restored.

habitats and species. Koli attracts around 140 000 visitors
every year; the majority are Finnish but we also have foreign visitors (manly Russians) during winter.
Koli is the heartland of Finland, and has been an inspiration
for such great artists as the composer Jean Sibelius. It is a
magical place for us. On my guided tours, I usually sing to
give some ambience to the landscape. This scenery is so
meaningful for everyone that I have seen people cry when
we get to the hilltops.
In 2003, when the LIFE project started, Koli had fewer
visitors than it has today and lacked proper forest habitat management. Therefore, one of the main actions that
makes me proud is the restoration of the Finnish agrofor-

estry tradition of ‘slash-and-burn’ in Koli. Burning and sowing using traditional rye and turnip seeds has made the big
difference for me. It was carried out in a 17 ha area with the
involvement of the local community.
I now have the pleasure of showing the slash-and-burn areas to all of my customers by doing the trails where these
actions took and still take place. Along these trails, I also
show the restored meadows and grasslands habitats
and grazing introduced by LIFE. I and other tour guides
received training from the LIFE project.
Before LIFE I was a freelance guided tour operator and
now two families make a living from this business. LIFE
has made Koli more accessible to tourists and numbers
are steadily rising.”

Camping: “It’s a way of life!”
Campsite owners Wendy and Richard Curtis run the Beau Rivage eco-campsite in Navarrenx, a town in
Aquitaine, southwest France.

THE PROJECT
The overall objective of the LIFE Eco-camps
project was to improve the environmental performance of campsites. The project developed a
voluntary ‘eco-label’ for new campsite constructions and renovations that was tested by five pilot
campsites in the region of Aquitaine, including the
featured, Camping Beau Rivage.

Although we love what we do, running a campsite is not
for everyone. It’s a way of life! We work seven days-aweek from March through to mid-October. Then, when
we ‘close’, we take a short holiday, before tackling all the
off-season maintenance. It’s something we can do together and it’s fantastic. But you have to be available 24
hours-a-day and you never know what’s going to happen
– blocked toilets, breakdowns, even a heart-attack (well,
it turned out to be a stroke): these are all things we’ve
had to deal with during the 2011 season.
Participation in the LIFE Eco-camps project enabled us
to work with various consultants to advise at all stages

of the development of the environmental profile of our
campsite – which as well as the camping pitches and
serviced chalets, includes a swimming pool and children’s
play area, solar panels on two shower blocks, a waterrecovery system and a waste disposal system. The idea
was to ensure that the building work has as little impact
as possible on the environment by taking measures to
control all aspects of the process. There is no magic list
available to tell you which products or methods are more
environmentally friendly than any other. So it becomes
a process of consideration, comparison and justification.

Richard and Wendy Curtis

LIFE savings
We’re especially grateful for the help we received from
LIFE concerning the installation of the solar panels on
the two communal shower blocks. We wanted to install
the panels to pre-heat water in conjunction with our existing gas-fired water heaters. LIFE really saved us here,
as we had become so confused with the conflicting information we were getting from the ‘experts’ who were trying to sell us their systems. We kept being told that what
we wanted to do was impossible and we would have to
replace the existing system and start from scratch. As
you can imagine the quotes for this were horrendous.
Thanks to LIFE, we were able to use the services of a
consultancy firm, whose independent experts provided
an environmental impact study and detailed analysis of
how the panels could be most effectively used with the

MEET THE BUSINESSES

“We moved to France from Jersey at the end of 1991 to
build a campsite in the Deux-Sèvres, which we ran until
we sold up and moved south. In 2004 we bought this
campsite (Camping Beau Rivage) a former municipal site
in the fortified town of Navarrenx in the region of Aquitaine. Today, we have 70 ‘pitches’ for tents, caravans and
camper-vans and 16 wood chalets.

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existing equipment. We were then able to ask for a more
realistic quote and also to request a (50%) grant from
ADEME – the French Agency for the Environment and Energy Management. This suddenly made this part of the
project feasible. With the increase in gas prices looking
likely to continue, we hope to have recovered the cost in
12 years easily.
By installing low-debit push-button taps everywhere, we
have found that we were able to reduce general water
consumption on the site. Even having put in the swimming pool and the 10 ‘eco-chalets’ (installed during the
LIFE project), our water consumption has only increased by
about 30% since our first years. We have also installed a
recirculation pump on one of the shower blocks to reduce
the amount of water wasted while people wait for hot water to arrive.
The construction of the chalets was an issue that had to
take into account a lot of conflicting interests. We were able
to make use of the environmental impact study, as well as

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Participation in the LIFE
Eco-camps project enabled us to
work with various consultants
to advise at all stages of the
development of the environmental
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the expertise of Olivier Hantz, our LIFE project organiser.
The chalets had to be a certain height above the ground
in order to leave enough fall for the drains. So a certain
amount of terracing work had to be carried out. There was
a need to ensure that that the people sitting on the terraces would not be overlooking other holidaymakers, and
also a need to ensure that the terraces were angled in such
a way that they did not overheat in the height of summer.
We wanted to avoid the necessity for air conditioning and
so made use of the trees as much as possible, to provide
shade in the hottest part of the day.
Because of its location in the historical town of Navarrenx,
with its magnificent ramparts, we also had to take into
account the restrictions imposed by the Architectes des
Bâtiments de France (responsible for protecting France’s
urban and environmental architectural heritage). The ABF,
wanted to ensure that the chalet section did not look like a
housing estate! We were told, for example, that we couldn’t
include individual parking in the new-build chalet section.
This would have meant asking new arrivals to carry all
their suitcases and belongings right across the campsite. In
the end, the ABF relented, and we were allowed to provide
onsite parking in the chalet section.
Looking back over the six years since the project ended, we
would still have implemented the environmental changes
started under the LIFE project. But LIFE showed us a pro-

cess of evaluating every stage and justifying each choice
made along the way.
Of the eco-innovations, campers seem to love the idea of
the solar panels. But we’ve noticed that they don’t always
let us know if, say, the temperature of the water is not hot
enough. We think some people think it’s because there’s
not been enough sun. Whereas of course, it’s us who control the temperature and we just need to turn the gas up!
We give all our campers information on the environmental
efforts we have made. While they do appreciate the work
we have done, we are not under any illusion that it in any
way influences their decision as to where they take their
holidays. When we give people the recycling information,
some are very enthusiastic and extremely careful about
getting it right, while others will throw up their hands and
say: ‘Oh, but I’m on holiday’, as though it is all too much of
an effort. On the whole though, we think it makes people
feel better if they think things are being done in a way
that respects the environment.”

LIFE 20 years competition
To mark the 20th anniversary of the LIFE programme in 2012, the LIFE Units organised two competitions open to all beneficiaries and
project partners, past or present: a photo competition and a competition to sum up, in 20 words or less, what LIFE means to you.
From the numerous entries received, a panel of judges had the hard task of selecting the 20 “Best” photos and 20 “Best” texts. This longlist of “Best” entries was then whittled down to select the three “Best of the Best” photos and texts, which are presented below. All the
winning entries can be found on the LIFE 20th anniversary website: http://life20.eu